


Five Times Rescued

by Raven_Ehtar



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game), Marvel
Genre: 4+1, Accidental Plot, Asgardian politics, Attempted Seduction, Bad Puns, Banter, Crushes, Cussing, Depression, Domestic Fluff, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, FrostIron - Freeform, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Janet Van Dyne is a Good Bro, Light Angst, Loki (Marvel) Does What He Wants, M/M, Oblivious Tony Stark, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Pining Loki (Marvel), Pranks and Practical Jokes, References to Shakespeare, Sassy Loki (Marvel), Sassy Tony Stark, Secrets, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Walks In The Park, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000, pop culture references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-03-17 04:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18958027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_Ehtar/pseuds/Raven_Ehtar
Summary: The Avengers Academy is meant to be training and preparing them, making them into 'the heroes they were always meant to be.' That said, sometimes the things you rescue other people from aren't exactly standard - or the 'who' you are rescuing.Tony wasn't sure how it came about that he kept getting Loki out of scrapes, but it wasn't like he was just going to let the guy flounder, was he? Besides, it was nice to spend time with Loki, whatever form the time might take.- OR -Four times Tony rescued Loki from everyone and everything else, and one time Loki rescued Tony from himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!! This is my entry into the Iron Man Big Bang for 2018! This has been a super fun project to work on, and it's actually really surreal that I'm finally able to share this after working on it for so long! XD
> 
> I was partnered with dreamkist, who has done the beautiful header you see in this chapter, and who has also done more you'll be seeing in future chapters! ♥ You can find her here on Ao3 as [dreamkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist), or on tumblr as [ifall](https://ifall.tumblr.com/)! She was an absolute delight to work with, and I am so grateful to her for being there to snatch our desired posting date when I was at work and couldn't. ^//^
> 
> There are five chapters total, and three beautiful pieces of artwork! Chapters will be posted one every other day, with the final chapter going up June 2! Enjoy, everyone! ♥ ♥ ♥

 

 

It probably came as something of a surprise to people when Tony Stark, young head of Stark Industries and the cutting edge of technology, argued the continued relevance of things many kept swearing were obsolete. Things like print, for example. The stereotypical image of a young man who was pushing the limits of technological advancement was one which usually proclaimed ‘print is dead’ at every opportunity. It was one of many stereotypes which got applied to Tony, and one of the few he actually worked to correct, rather than allow or encourage.

Thinking that ‘print was dead’ was stupid for a few different reasons, in his opinion, not the least of which was that it was a rather elitist way of looking at the distribution of information. Again, it always seemed to come as a shock to people that _Tony Stark_ , of all people, would deign to be aware that not everyone had access to digital information. It was true that not everyone could access paper and print books, or were literate, but the obstacles there were easier to surmount without the added hurdles of digital access. The whole issue was one which had been taking up a small corner of Tony’s attention for a while - a way to make information more available and accessible. There always seemed to be something else to take up his main focus, but it was a project he turned over from time to time, brainstorming ideas.

Beside the question of accessibility to current information, though, the concept of print being dead completely ignored the fact that there was an incalculable amount of knowledge committed to pages which would never be converted to electronic mediums. Assuming that anything which _wasn’t_ digitized was useless was such an egotistical stance that it left even Tony gaping. It was a stupid way of looking at the world, throwing away so much knowledge that, if he thought about it too much, actually made him angry.

And if there was ever a good example of just how invaluable the printed word continued to be, it was the Timeless Archives.

In all honesty the Archives weren’t one of Tony’s most common haunts. It probably didn’t even rate in the top five places on campus where he hung out. Those would break down to Stark Tower, the Avengers Dorm, Dr. Pym’s lab, Van Dyne’s and Club A. He was a busy guy, and the Archives just didn’t appear on his go-to list all that often.

Which wasn’t to say that he avoided the place. Whenever he stepped in the building, Tony was washed with a sense of calm and quiet awe at the amount of packed and stored knowledge surrounding him on every side. It was humbling in a way which put all of the super-powered people populating the Academy to shame.

Tony was going to have to devote some time to exploring the Archives much more thoroughly than he had done up to this point. Whenever he came he found new corners, new sections, whole new _floors_ , and he wasn’t sure that was entirely his imagination. He suspected that the building was quietly breaking some fundamental laws of physics somewhere, when really the only place which ought to be doing that was Pym’s lab. If anyone else had noticed the weirdness of the Archives, they weren’t saying anything, they just accepting it as another part of the campus. Which was fair enough, he supposed. They all had more than enough to concentrate on with what the Academy was throwing at them, let alone what each of them had to deal with in their private lives. Who had the time to add ‘explore the continuity of space-time in relation to the campus library’ to their list? Tony certainly didn’t. But he was going to _find_ some time. Who knew that sorts of books might be hidden in some dimensional pocket no one had found yet? Maybe if he started by interviewing the librarians…? They always seemed to know exactly where any text was, Escher physics notwithstanding.

Tony wandered through the shelves of dusty tomes, sticking to the better known paths and keeping windows in sight, determined to be lost only in his thoughts. What with generating entire wings full of books out of thin air, the Archives were surprisingly easy to get turned around in. Sticking to an exterior wall was usually a safe bet for keeping track of where you were.

Usually.

Tony was still reasonably certain of where he was and, more importantly, how to find his way back out. What he _had_ lost track of was what he had come to find in the first place. Nothing for the classes or training handed out by the Academy, he remembered that much. He’d had some half-formed idea to try and integrate his own tech with some of what he’d seen coming out of Wakanda, and then maybe adding something from Asgard…? He’d come to the Archives for research materials, gotten distracted by the Archive itself… and now he was trying to remember what exactly he’d hoped to find. There was a marginally higher chance he would find what he wanted if he knew what that was.

While trying to remember which section he wanted, Tony stumbled across Loki.

Like any modern campus library, the Archives were fitted out with long tables and plenty of chairs of various levels of discomfort, catering to both cramming students and exhausted dorm mates who’d rather sleep in a library than their own beds. Loki was camped out at one of these, and was in the former category from the looks of things. A large stack of heavy books rested at his elbow, while a similarly thick volume was open in front of him. At Loki’s right hand was a stack of notepaper, the only visible sheet packed with writing, formulae and graphs, about half of which was crossed out. Leaning against the table, not far from his reach, was his scepter, ready to be taken up in an instant.

The mage hadn’t noticed him yet, so concentrated was he on what he was reading. Tony stopped immediately, and took the opportunity to watch Loki at work. He smiled at just how _normal_ the guy looked when he wasn’t so busy putting up a high and mighty front.

Well, perhaps ‘normal’ was a bit strong. Truth was that Loki was very good looking, with severe coloring and sharp, angular features and black hair he let grow down to his shoulders. And while the way he dressed didn’t make him stand out relative to the Academy’s population, the tailored suits and golden horns he wore every day were hard to miss. And even ignoring his striking, aristocratic features  — and really, who would _want_ to? — there was just something about him which singled him out in a crowd. Patricia had once said it was his magical abilities that made him stand out, but Tony didn’t think that was it. He didn’t get the same sort of vibe off of Amora, for example, and _she_ was an Asgardian mage as well.

Whatever it was, it, too, was softened when Loki bent over his textbooks, a faint frown drawing his brows close together as he worked out problems. It was… kind of cute.

Which was an odd thing to think about a self-proclaimed future conqueror of Earth. Odd, but not the first time Tony had thought it. The two of them had been put together as study buddies not long into the Academy’s starting, and he’d had plenty of opportunity then to see the mage concentrated on his schoolwork, to observe the little habits he would display as his did so - rolling and flipping his pens in his fingers as he read, the way his left knee would bounce a little when he started getting impatient, how he would sometimes chew on his lower lip… It was humanizing, and surprisingly endearing.

Of course it turned out that Loki hadn’t needed any tutoring in chemistry at all, which had been the whole reason they’d been paired off. His trouble with the subject had been faked, and Tony had been left not fully certain just how much he could believe any of the mannerisms he’d observed.

It was kind of nice to see that at least some of them _hadn’t_ been faked. He would have been more upset about those not being real, and therefore not likely to be repeated ever again, than he’d been to discover that his time as a tutor had been wasted.

He was thinking of making his presence known and joining Loki at the table for a while, at least until he remembered exactly why he’d come to the Archives in the first place. They’d spent enough time hanging out together for it to not feel weird to just randomly join in on a study session — not that it would have stopped him anyway — and it had been long enough since they’d last hung out that Tony felt they were overdue a little bit of buddy time.

But then he noticed just how deep the frown on Loki’s face was — nearly a scowl, as though he were preparing to set the poor textbook on fire. Considering who he was, it wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility he could do that. In fact, the longer he sat and stared at the pages, the fiercer his expression became. It almost looked like…

Was Loki _actually_ having trouble with a subject now?

Tony tilted, trying to get a view of which textbook it was. When he was thwarted there, he switched to Loki’s notes — there really was an awful lot that had been scratched out — but that was even less helpful. He could make neither heads nor tails of anything Loki had written, and that was just a blow to his pride as a resident genius. Loki had proven himself incredibly intelligent as well, but Tony ought to be able to tell what _sort_ of information he was trying to parse out by his scribbles. If Tony could just see the textbook more clearly, then he’d have a place to start.

Thankfully, Tony had a workaround.

He’d been working on his armor over the last couple of days, which meant that he was wearing bits and pieces of it at all times so he could test out how well it was working. That included a partial helmet, complete with visor. He flipped it down and focused in on the open book, zooming in until the notes became legible.

He blinked, and made sure what he was seeing _was_ what he was seeing.

Yes. That was a thick volume of William Shakespeare. And there was no mistaking Loki’s expression, his slowly sinking posture, or the frustrated scribbling in his notes.

Loki had hit a speed bump in his study of the Bard. An old human poet and playwright was stumping an alien demigod.

Tony clamped a hand over his mouth. It really wouldn’t be nice to laugh at the Asgardian’s plight, and if he heard Tony sniggering there was no doubt at all that he would take it very poorly. It wasn’t even as though Tony meant it vindictively. It was just so _cute_ to see the haughty mage look flatfooted over Shakespeare.

He really needed to stop being so adorable.

Pulling himself together, Tony straightened his clothes, got rid of the visor, and walked round the final bookshelf which separated him from the tables and from Loki. Putting on his most charming grin and swaggering as though he _hadn’t_ just been spying like a creepy stalker, he called out, “Hey there, Gorgeous. What brings you round these parts?”

Loki didn’t startle at the sudden voice breaking the silence. He looked up very calmly and leveled Tony with such a dark look that he actually paused, his grin faltering.

“Was that a little too forward? If it is I retract the nickname, but not the opinion.”

It got Loki’s expression to clear a little, at least. The line between his brows smoothed over and his frown eased into a half smile. “As though you would ever be able to restrain yourself from being forward. It would be completely contrary to your nature.”

Tony’s grin came back, his confidence resurging at the teasing tone. “You know me so well.”

No objections were raised to his presence as he closed the final distance to the table, or to his very blatant look over the books laying open and stacked up in a small pillar. Loki simply watched him without comment, no clue what sorts of thoughts might be going through his head. Possibly it was meant as an intimidation tactic, to make Tony so uncomfortable that he would leave him alone to his frustrated hair pulling. If it were, though, then Loki still had more to learn about Tony Stark and what it would take to put him off a course of action when his mind was made up.

Tony made a show of looking over the open book, raising his brows in mock surprise which he was certain didn’t actually fool Loki for a second. “Shakespeare? Have you taken a sudden interest in theater? …You know, now I say that out loud, it’s not nearly as surprising as I thought it would be.”

Loki snorted, his neutral expression becoming wry. “Hardly. This playwright’s paltry scribbling can hardly measure to the productions in Asgard.”

“Now that’d be a thing to see,” Tony said thoughtfully, trying to picture it. “You’ll have to tell me about them sometime.”

Loki smirked. “If you are still alive at the time, I will take you to see them for yourself.”

Tony wasn’t quite certain how to respond to that. He knew that Loki was essentially banished from Asgard for the time being, and from travelling to any other Realms. He was essentially in a cosmic time out on Earth until Odin decided he’d learned his lesson, or became a real boy, or something. Those details weren’t particularly clear to Tony — or to Loki or Thor from what he could tell.

What _was_ clear, though, was Loki’s determination to conquer the ‘Nine Realms’ and return home in a blaze of tyrannical glory. He wasn’t exactly subtle about it around campus, and most everyone had stopped taking his mini rants seriously. But it made the phrase ‘If you’re still alive’ a little worrisome. Did Loki expect him to die in the conflict he was planning, or did he predict it would take so long to come to fruition that Tony would have died of old age by the time Asgard was taken? Or was he implying, as many others had done before him, that Tony was too self-destructive to trust that he’d survive week to week?

Whatever the case, it was still a promise to take Tony off to see a whole other world, a whole other culture with its own brand of science and technology to get to know and dig his greedy little paws into. That was more than enough to get his blood pumping and ignore the possible double meanings of his statement. Who cares what he meant, there was new science to look forward to!

…Professor Pym might have been a bad influence on him, in retrospect.

He grinned at Loki. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“As though you could,” was the smirking reply.

Tony shrugged. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? I think you’ll find I can be surprisingly persuasive when I want to be.” He took a half seat on the table itself and motioned to the papers and books. “So, what is all of this for, then? It looks like homework, but I didn’t think this place bothered with an English Lit class. Although,” he added, cutting off what Loki was about to say, “would an English Lit course count as Foreign Language credits for you and Thor? Technically you’re not actually speaking English.”

Loki gave him an exasperated look, deliberately pausing longer than was necessary, making certain Tony was finished before speaking himself. “Technically you’re correct. Neither of us are speaking English, though if I were so inclined I might say that quite a few of you whose first language is English are _barely_ speaking it.”

“Hey, now—“

“Be that as it may,” he went on, heedless of Tony’s protest, “there are several reasons why this would not factor into any sort of Foreign Language course. This particular sampling,” he motioned to the book with a sneer, “is far too archaic, for one, to give any sort of accurate impression of the language as it is now. For another, both Thor and I can speak English perfectly well, it’s just simpler to stick to Allspeak. And, before you ask, even if we _couldn’t_ speak English, the Allspeak would render any such study — and credits — moot. Allspeak simply doesn’t work that way.”

Which was all a rambling way of saying ‘no.’ Loki did love to speechify. Tony rather suspected that if Loki couldn’t speak either Allspeak or English, he would be smashing through that language barrier as quickly as possible just so people could understand him when he decided to ramble. Any world which couldn’t understand Loki and his twisty logic would be unlivable. If the mage had to teach an entire planet how to speak Asgardian in order to understand and appreciate his mockery, Tony had little doubt he would do it.

“And how _does_ Allspeak work exactly…?”

Loki arched a brow at him. “That is not the first time you have asked me that question.”

“And you never give me a good answer!” Tony threw his hands up, exasperated. “You always put me off with that ‘Your puny mortal brain could never comprehend’ malarkey.” He did a fairly good impression of Loki’s voice and accent, if he did say so himself, and the look he was being given only confirmed it in his mind. “You know one day I’m going to pin you down so you _have_ to teach me how it works, and we’ll just see how puny my brain is.”

It looked as though Loki were doing his best not to laugh, his lips twitching and eyes dancing. “I look forward to that day and your efforts,” he said, managing to say it relatively tonelessly — though Tony still had the impression that he was being laughed at.

Deciding to bring the conversation back around again, Tony spun the book so he could read it. “Okay, so we’ve established that this isn’t for personal interest — I think — or that it’s for a class — probably — so what _is_ it for? Why are you soaking your brain in a dead human’s ‘paltry scribbling’?”

For a minute Loki didn’t answer, but stared at Tony, appraising, most probably deciding if he wanted to answer honestly or if he wanted to prevaricate. Tony did his best to keep his face open, hopefully projecting the same kind of vibe which had gotten them spending so much time together and semi-comfortable with each other. He knew Loki had trouble trusting people — ironic and understandable — which was why Tony always did his best to never do anything which might compromise the small measure of trust he seemed to have earned.  

Eventually Loki sighed, and looked down at the books in front of him with a dark scowl. “This is one of Odin’s ideas. Another attempt to shape me into the sort of son he can accept. More like Thor.”

Okay, ow. There wasn’t all that much venom in the statement, but there didn’t need to be. Tony could recognize daddy issues at fifty yards, and like a lot of other things, Loki never tried to hide those particular issues. Actually, for a guy with a reputation as a deceiver, he wore an awful lot on his sleeve. This particular example was pretty mild, but it was there — resentment not just for his father but for his brother as well, who added to Loki’s trouble just by being who he was, the poor idiot.

“’More acceptable,’ huh?” He echoed flippantly, leafing through the book. “Is he hoping that you’ll start saying ‘verily’ at the end of every sentence if you read enough of this? Which is another thing I don’t get about Allspeak, by the way. Why does Thor sound like a Junior High Shakespeare nerd, and you sound a little formal, but mostly normal? Is that the Allspeak trying to get different accents across the language barrier — and if it _is,_ why do you have different accents? How much of Allspeak is actually language and how much is magic — and how intelligent or malleable is that magic? Is it like the universal translators in Star Trek—“

_“Stark.”_

He stumbled to a stop, giving Loki a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I’ve been thinking about this and the mechanics for a while. And the one guy I keep asking about it refuses to give any straight answers.”

Loki didn’t look terribly put out by Tony’s high speed rambling, but his brows did go up at that. “’The one guy’…?” He shook his head, apparently redirecting his attention. “No, he does not wish that I begin speaking like Thor — thank the Norns for small mercies. No. He wishes for me to learn more of human behavior and so develop a sense of sympathy for them. He hopes I will become so enamored with your pathetic race that I will be less likely to subjugate you all to my rule.” The sneer in Loki’s tone was enough to tell Tony how well that endeavor was going.

Frankly, Tony shared the contempt lacing Loki’s words. “And he thinks that making you read _Shakespeare_ is going to make you like us more? If anything it’ll probably make nuking the planet from orbit seem like a good idea.”

It got Loki to look over at him, a startled half smile on his lips. Tony ignored it in favor of continuing to flip through the book. He frowned as he picked up scraps of dialogue, realizing _which_ play it was Loki was currently reading.

“Has Odin ever read Shakespeare himself? Or did he just assign this blindly? I’m going to assume the latter, cuz… ‘ _This is a practice as full of labor as a wise man’s art. For folly, that he wisely shows is fit. But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their will_.’” He glanced up at Loki, one brow raised. “Does he know he’s having you read text which puts foolishness — Shakespearean for deceit, sometimes — on a pedestal over conventional wisdom?”

From the smirk on Loki’s face, it was a point he had also discovered, and had found a lot of entertainment in. “Not so far as I am aware. And I must admit to developing some fondness for the character of Feste. And a little for Viola.”

“I figured you would. A man who makes his way by mocking the people around him with acidic — but true — observations, and a woman who deceives her way into a position of power and proves she’s fit for it once she’s there. What’s not to love? Honestly, I would have been a little shocked if you _didn’t_ like them.”

There was no mistaking the smile on Loki’s face, now. “I think it’s rather safe to say that Odin is ignorant of the finer details in this particular test. Although it’s possible he’s not, and he hopes that seeing these traits displayed by humans will make me sympathize with them more. Rather nefarious, don’t you think?”

“And here I thought there was no family resemblance at all.”

The words were barely out before Tony realized that was probably the very _worst_ thing to say, but Loki gave a bark of laughter. Genuine laughter. “Don’t let him hear you say anything of the kind,” he said, eyes twinkling. “No one likes to have their least agreeable characteristics pointed out to them. Especially when it’s personified in their own son.”

Tony snorted. “Don’t I know that too well. But that’s kinda bull, you know. If Odin thinks you’re an embodiment of his worst traits, then you’ve done a fantastic job of improving on the base ingredients.”

The statement, dropped on him with little fanfare and no teasing tone, seemed to catch Loki unawares. His smile drooped somewhat as he stared at Tony. It was a rather rare expression to see on him, and Tony crowed internally to be the one to put it on him.

He leaned forward, across the table and putting himself into Loki’s bubble. He gave a suggestive grin. “Are you falling for me yet, Gorgeous?”

The shove he got in response was probably very, very light relative to how hard Loki _could_ have pushed him, but it was still enough to knock him back on his butt, flailing to catch his balance.

“Hardly,” the Prince huffed, unconcerned with Tony’s struggle to remain off of the floor. “I am not one of your conquests to be so easily swayed by pretty flattery. Though, in fairness, neither are they.”

Finally catching his balance, Tony gave a shocked gasp, clutching at his chest. “Wounded! I am wounded, sir!”

“By what? My stating the truth of your continued failures to snare any man or woman’s attention?”

Tony winced, but shook his head. “I’ll admit that that stings, but no. I’m wounded that you think my honest and heartfelt compliments are just flattery. Think you I so shallow?”

Loki seemed less shocked by the reinforcement of the compliment than he had been by its original statement. He rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. “That was a horrific attempt at a Shakespearean mode of speaking. I can only hope that your instructors were merciful when this was a part of _your_ curriculum.”

It would probably be thought of as crowing if he admitted that he’d actually flown through those classes with no problems. He had a brain built for absorbing huge amounts of information very quickly, and it made little difference what _kind_ of information it was. And as he’d discovered very quickly, he was a natural on the stage — the grander the character the better.

“That brings up a pretty good question, I think. How exactly is ol’ One Eye going to be measuring the effectiveness of this little exercise?”

“You really do need to come up with a better nickname. You might be referring to either Odin or to Director Fury.”

“… Big Beardy?”

“No.”

“I’ll work on it. Now. What does Daddy-o expect you to do to prove this worked the way he wants it to?”

Loki sighed, glancing over his pile of scratched and scribbled notes. Even knowing what they were for — in theory — Tony still couldn’t figure out what some of the graphs were meant to represent. Surely Shakespearean plays weren’t _that_ complicated? In fact the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Not that Odin would assign something like learning human psychology via Shakespeare, that seemed _exactly_ the sort of thing he would do. But since when had Loki ever had this much trouble understanding people? And since when had he ever cared so much about what his father told him to do?  

He closed the book and shoved it away from him, a touch petulantly. “It seems he’s taking some inspiration from this infernal institution, and expects me to write and turn in a— a _paper_.”

Tony blinked. “What, like an essay?”

_“Yes,”_ he said, all of the venom Tony had been expecting from before packed in that one word.

“And he worries about _Thor_ going native.” Tony muttered. Was there anything more boringly human than writing papers? Not just essays, but studies, reports, dissertations… humans liked to bury themselves in paper. He hadn’t thought that Asgard, in general, followed the same trend. “Well, you know he actually tossed you a bit of a lifesaver, there.”

The glare he got would have peeled paint. “And how exactly have you reached that conclusion?”

Tony smirked, leaning back on his hands, one foot swinging back and forth off the edge of the table. It was rather fun giving advice to someone who was supposedly centuries old. Loki watched him warily, as though the posture were a sign he intended no good. He even eyed the swinging foot for a moment, an obvious purveyor of evil if ever there was one.

“Because he’s gone and given you an _essay_ assignment, and essays are only hard if you go into them thinking there’s only one right answer. Essays are basically giant open ended questions you get to talk your way out of. And I _know_ you’re good at talking your way out of things.”

Loki snorted, but he looked less annoyed, and more intrigued by what Tony was saying. When he transferred his gaze to look back over his books and papers, Tony pressed his advantage.

“The question itself seems pretty open to interpretation to me. Just proving that you have more sympathy for humans? The way I see it, you could spin that a couple ways. Just finding those two characters you liked, you could make the paper all about them, and ‘prove’ that by finding qualities you could appreciate in them, you’re sympathizing with humans more as a whole. Or you could try and do something a little meta and fold it back on the playwright — how Shakespeare himself must have felt about foolishness versus conventional wisdom, given that he was a poet and a bit of an outsider to the mainstream. Or! _Or!_ You could go _extra_ meta and write a paper about the evolving attitudes around Shakespeare’s work, how it changed from popular entertainment to elitist literature just based on how long it’s survived. I think you could write something really long and involved that sounds really good — but which doesn’t actually say very much. It’s all down to how good you are at BS.”

Loki gave a smirk. “And if there is one thing everyone agrees I have great skill at, it’s ‘BS.’”

Tony snickered. “One of these days I’m gonna hear you actually cuss. I’ll bet it’ll be something to hear in that accent of yours.”

Loki didn’t choose to reply to that directly, only rolling his eyes before continuing to look over his stacks of paper and books with a thoughtful expression on his face. Showing more restraint than most people gave him credit for, Tony kept his mouth shut and let him think. As much as he loved bantering with Loki, it was also nice to just sit quietly with him, and any excuse to just watch his sharp profile without getting smacked for the privilege was one he was going to take, please and thank you.

Though, Loki only ever seemed amused by his staring, rather than annoyed.

“You’ve raised some interesting points,” he said eventually. His voice was carefully neutral, as though keeping his opinions on Tony’s input to himself. Typical. “I’ll keep them in mind as I proceed.”

Tony hid his grin, hopping down from the table to stand next to Loki in his chair. “Glad to have helped out, Gorgeous.”

“You did not _‘help,’_ Stark,” he snapped, bristling immediately. “You merely provided an outside perspective — or rather, an _inside_ perspective on this convoluted literature.”

“Uh huh.” There really wasn’t much chance of hiding his smile when seeing the expression on Loki’s face. It was so belligerently defiant, and in response to such a small thing — a little advice for an essay. How could he _not_ smile? “Whatever you say, Lokes. Do me a favor, though, yeah? Let me know what Daddy-o thinks of whatever you decide to turn in.”

His face got even more defiant, eyeing Tony sideways. “Why?”

“I dunno. Just curiosity, really. I want to know how much more I need to dislike the Allfather if he gives you a shit score.” He shrugged. He hadn’t really had a thought-out reason why he would want to stay updated with Loki’s non-school paper when he asked about it, but if he tried to spin up a reason on the spot just to pacify Loki, he would see through it immediately. “Up to you, though. If I see you walking around with a storm cloud over your head, I’ll assume it wasn’t a great score.”

The suspicious stare lingered on Tony a few moments longer, sharp eyes assessing — as they always did. Then it was gone, and Loki was waving him away, a complete dismissal. “I’ll consider it, but I make no promises. Now would you please leave? You’re distracting in the extreme.”

“Aww. I _knew_ you really liked me.”

Tony scuttled off quickly under Loki’s glare, chuckling the whole way. He might not remember what it was he’d come to the library to find, but he was pretty pleased with what he _had_ found.

—•—

A few days went by without any word on what came of Loki’s paper, nor did Tony catch him again at reading Shakespeare. In fact Tony had almost forgotten about it. The days since that little interaction in the library had been full of more than enough other concerns to push out Loki’s essay. HYDRA and AIM were being pests as always, and there were at least two parties Janet was planning at once, possibly four, and she insisted on getting Tony involved. And there was, of course, the whole training thing which was what the Academy was ostensibly _for_. There was plenty to take up time and brain space, so Loki’s test on human sympathies was something which got put on the mental back burner, only slightly jogged now and then when Tony saw Loki around the campus — especially if he had a book in his hand. But for the most part, it left Tony’s consciousness.

That is until, after waking up one morning and dragging his sleep deprived, overworked butt down to his workshop, he found a steaming cup of coffee waiting on his desk for him.

He stopped and stared. He didn’t have actual _people_ to do things like pick up after him, cook for him, or leave coffee in convenient places for him to find. Robots and AI, yes; people, no, and robots weren’t all that great for spontaneous acts of kindness. He supposed he knew enough people who could find a way into Stark Tower if they really wanted to when the security was lax… probably one or two who could even with the security on high, to be honest.

But none of them were very likely to sneak in, leave a coffee and sneak out again — not without taking the opportunity to kick him while they were at it, anyway.

It was a fresh cup, though. He could see it steaming even from the doorway, so it must have been left _very_ recently.

Loki. A minute or two ago at most.

Blinking, trying to get his brain to boot up faster, he looked around the workshop. There were plenty of places where a sneaky mage could hide if he wanted to, but he couldn’t spot anyone. He could smell the coffee, though. It smelled _good_.

“Hey, J,” he called, resisting the urge to go in and sample the gift left for him. “Any ideas on who our morning java fairy was?”

There was a brief series of beeps before JARVIS’ smooth, simulated voice came through the speakers. “I have no records showing who it was that left the coffee, sir. Though a continuity check shows that the mug appeared the same moment you entered the elevator to come down to the workshop.”

“It just ‘appeared’?”

“In an instant, sir, yes.”

Well, wasn’t that odd.

“Have you tried a reboot of the affected times, checked for tampering?”

“Of course, sir. I’ve found nothing to suggest tampering or a malfunction in my systems. I’ll continue to search for—“

“Nah, J,” he said, “don’t bother. I know who left it.” He’d approached the desk and the waiting coffee cautiously, eventually getting close enough to see a little slip of paper caught under the mug. After moving it, he saw there was writing. What it said — and the familiar scrawl — left little doubt as to who had left the drink.

_‘He found_  
_my presentation_  
_acceptable.’_

“Indeed, sir?” JARVIS sounded miffed. “Perhaps you could share such knowledge, or perhaps the method used to bypass our security so I can ensure the same tactics aren’t used again?”

Tony picked up the coffee, the mug — black with a green interior, how subtle — pleasantly warm against his fingers. It smelled spicy, a little like the kind cafes liked to sell during autumn, but mellower, less sickly sweet. “I’ll be sure to ask them the next time I see them, J. I can’t promise any straight answers, though.”

“I… see.”

Tony doubted it, but it didn’t matter. He got to the work of the day, feeling much brighter than the amount of sleep he got could really account for, enjoying the spicy, creamy coffee Loki had left for him. He’d have to get Loki to show him how to make it — or just go out of his way to make him feel thankful again. Either way, he’d be spending more time with the guy. Really, that was practically an end in itself.

The coffee would just be a bonus.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone!
> 
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> If anyone wants to come say hi or chat about nerdy things, hmu! ♥


	2. Chapter 2

“I think we should have a theme for the party, something which will get everyone really interacting with people they normally wouldn’t!”

“Uh huh. I like the idea, but what kind of theme do you think will have everyone getting all buddy-buddy on each other? I mean, we’ve got plenty of social butterflies—“

“Or wasps.”

“Or wasps, yes, but there’s also plenty of people who are just… introverted. Shy. I’m not sure there’s much of a theme any party could have which those people are really going to get into. It’s still a _party_ at the end of the day.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Janet trailed off, pouting a little.

Tony felt for her. Janet van Dyne was always front and center of the welcoming committee whenever someone new was brought to the Academy. She was vivacious and friendly, and had a talent for drawing people out of themselves which was so effective it was a little bit spooky. Tony had often found himself thinking that _that_ was her true superpower — getting people to open up to her no matter how reclusive they might be normally. She’d even gotten people like Cloak and Dagger to open up a bit. Janet thrived on socialization, lived and breathed for hanging out and getting to know people, taking an interest in every little thing. It was almost impossible _not_ to respond to that kind of a personality.

The problem was that lately there were so _many_ new heroes coming in it was hard even for the quick moving Wasp to keep up properly when trying to meet everyone one-on-one.

The solution she had arrived at was, more or less predictably, to throw a party and get to know all of the newbies _en masse_.

The problem which Tony could see was that a lot of those newbies were practically hermits. Janet could usually get even hermits to take part in her shindigs, but that was when she had some time to spend with them beforehand, sort of pre-socializing them. None of this latest batch would have any of that, because… well. That was the point, wasn’t it? It was a logistical hamster wheel.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Janet was not put off in the least by hamster wheels.

“I still think we can get everyone into the proper spirit of things if we just provide the right kind of encouragement,” she said.

Tony smiled, taking a bite out of his sandwich. It was a tradition, now, where every Monday, Wednesday and Friday they would get together for lunch, catching up over food. They also got together whenever there was a social event — 99% of which were organized by Janet, Tony or both — or whenever Janet was just feeling like hunting Tony down to hang out. If it hadn’t been for her aforementioned aggressively friendly personality, Tony would have thought her apparent need to be around him so much was strange. After all, there were plenty of others she could attach herself to for a while.

But Janet was one of his best friends, and she took that role seriously. It wasn’t like she thought it was a duty or anything, at least not from what he could tell. She just put in that extra effort with him to be sure they never drifted apart, no matter what else was going on for the both of them.

It was an effort he appreciated, and which had only grown since he’d told her a little of his life at home, and Howard.

“And what kind of encouragement did you have in mind?” he asked through a mouthful of ham and cheese.

Janet paused to think for all of three seconds before giving him one of the least subtle grins he’d ever seen. And he’d seen himself in mirrors, thank you very much. “Weeelllllllll,” she said, leaning onto his shoulder. “Like you said, _we_ are two of the most social bugs on campus. People warm up to us the quickest, so if we keep circulating I’m pretty sure we can get everyone feeling good and interacting all over the place.”

Swallowing his bit of sandwich, Tony raised a brow at her. “Are you suggesting, perchance, that we simply _flirt_ everyone into a good mood and hope that does the trick?”

“Maybe,” Janet grinned up at him, and crumpled the remains of a cupcake wrapper in her hand. “And don’t be acting all high and mighty, Mr. ‘Wanna See My Rocket?’ As though you weren’t already planning to flirt your way through the entire night with or without my suggesting it.”

“That’s… probably true,” he admitted, deflating a little bit. That was the problem with arguing points with a best friend — and with having a personality as understated as his Iron Man suit. There really wasn’t much he could say to counter what Janet was saying. “It’s just when you put it like that it makes me feel cheap.”

“You _are_ cheap, Tony.”

“Excuse you, have you seen my Tower? The Tower with my name on it? The one which is mine and not made out of cardboard?”

“Yes, yes,” she waved off his protests, not at all fazed. “We’ve all seen your Tower, it’s very impressive. But you can be rich and still be cheap. And you embody both of those concepts supremely well.”

“I… Thank you? I think?”

“You’re welcome, Ton-Ton. I’m sure you’ll get over any awkwardness quickly enough. After all, it’s not like you don’t use flirting as a solution to problems already.”

“You know, it’d be a lot easier to argue with these points if they weren’t so spot on.”

“I know.”

“How dare you.”

“I love you too, Tony.”

He snorted, and took another bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t really put out, he just felt like he ought to put up some sort of defense for his reputation. For whatever reason. Fact was that he _was_ a flirt, an unabashed one, and everyone within earshot knew that — probably first hand. It was all a part of the Stark brand at this point: extreme wealth, innovative tech, massive ego, and a playboy approach to relationships.

Certainly that was how Howard Stark had run the company, the image he had projected, fostered and ultimately tied to the brand ‘Stark’ so tightly that Tony had been viewed as a reflection of his father long before he’d even left school. It was a branding which had stuck with Howard all his life, including being a playboy, despite having a wife and kid very much a part of the scene. But the impression was only helped by his behavior, flirting outrageously with every pretty face that happened to get too close to him. Rumors floated around constantly about potential affairs, or affairs the press was certain he was having. Whether he actually _was_ or not didn’t matter, the damage was done to his only confirmed relationship: the one with Maria Stark. And whatever negative smudge Howard was getting on his name for his rumored infidelities, they were nothing to what Maria had to endure. She wasn’t shielded in the same way Howard was, even if the supposed acts weren’t hers, and it took its toll after a while. It put a strain on her, on the marriage, on everything.

All because Howard couldn’t bring himself to have some self-control.

And Tony had more or less stepped directly into his shoes. He’d taken on the whole package, adding a little to the persona but not taking anything away from the reputation.

At least he wasn’t married.

Maybe that’s what it was that bothered him, he thought as he chewed. Not the fact that he _was_ a flirt, but that people seemed to take it as a given that that was the _only_ way he could communicate, the only sorts of relationships he was capable of having. He didn’t want that to be the way he was remembered, really, at least not the only way. He wasn’t on the lookout for a full time partner, but he wasn’t wholly averse to the idea, either. It might be nice, actually, to have just one person to focus all of his romantic affections on. He wasn’t a complete asshole. He was capable of committing to a single person and not straying. ‘Philandering’ was one part of the Stark legacy he would be quite happy to let die.

On the subject having and maintaining relationships which weren’t of the fluttering butterfly type, Janet was actually a really good start. Not that she was a romantic interest, god no. They clicked way too well as friends to attempt anything romantic — it would just come out really strange. But she was a steady friend, a steady relationship, which was having a kind of stabilizing influence on his reputation. He was less of a wild card now and something more along the lines of an overly affectionate scamp. It was an improvement.

And Janet wasn’t the only one. He had friends in Rhodey and Pepper — two friends he would have been absolutely lost without long before he ever came to the Academy. And once he’d arrived, he’d actually been gaining even more. People neither overawed nor intimidated by his name and reputation, nor put off by what he was actually like in person. Janet was one — the first one after arriving. The two of them had hit it off immediately, fitting together like they’d known each other for years. And then there was Sam, who reminded him a bit of Rhodey, more of himself, and was a solid wingman. And there was Steve, too, he supposed, though the guy was a little too much a good ol’ soldier boy to really be comfortable to be around… Plus his friend Bucky was a little… odd.

And there was Loki, of course. Actually, now that he came to think about it, he, Janet and Loki had been the first to arrive at the Academy, very nearly at the same time, before anyone else joined the fold. They had sort of become friends while it had just been the three of them holding down the fort, though the friendship which had sprung up between him and Tony was vastly different from the one he shared with Janet, and he could only assume that whatever was between Loki and Janet was just as different. All unique, but they were friendships which didn’t seem in any danger of falling apart.

Which was good. Tony valued his friendships higher than anyone probably thought, what with his flippant attitude and snark, but it was a concern which niggled at him quite a bit. That those he was close to today would find a breaking point in just how much of his nonsense they were willing to put up with and be gone tomorrow.

But Rhodey and Pep had stuck with him for years and hadn’t gotten fed up yet, and Janet seemed like the type to stick around even if she _did_ get exhausted with his nonsense. As for Loki…

“Whatever _we’re_ like, I’m still not so sure that rampant and aggressive flirtation is going to be the best way to draw out the shy ones.”

Janet gave him a wide eyed look, can of soda frozen halfway to her lips. “Who are you and where is Tony Stark?” She poked his side, making him twitch away ticklishly. “Did Tony manage to complete his robot clones or something? Is this actually a clever metal decoy?”

“Hardy har,” he grumbled, batting her hand away to stop any further poking. “When’s the last time you saw a robot eating ham and cheese?”

“What good is a decoy that doesn’t act like a human?” she countered quickly. “If anyone is going to come up with a robot with a digestive system it’ll be Tony Stark, y’know.” She kept her narrowed look on him a few moments longer before her expression dissolved into a smile. “But I doubt that Tony Stark would deliberately send out anything with his face and missed patches of beard, like you have today.” She pointed to the left side of his jaw.

He nearly slapped the remains of his sandwich against his face as his hand went to cover the spot Janet pointed out. He managed to avoid smearing his lunch into his face, and yes, found a patch of stubble under his jaw he’d somehow managed to miss with the razor. “Damn it,” he grumbled. “No matter how advanced the society or tech, some problems just never leave us.”

“Like vanity?” Janet smirked at him.

Tony grinned at her, then brushed back his hair with a dramatic little head toss. “The struggles of the beautiful have been felt for centuries, my dear Wasp, in presenting our natural gifts to the world in the most pleasing way and so brighten the days of those around us. To do less would be a disservice to humanity as a whole.”

“Oh, shut up.” Janet laughed, shoving him so he nearly unbalanced off of the bench. “If you inflate your own ego any bigger than it already is you’ll end up floating off the ground.”

“Hey, cool, an alternative to repulsors.”

Janet snorted, but before she could reply properly, the sound of other voices reached them. She hushed immediately and they both listened. The voices were too far away to make out any of the actual words, but the tone was recognizable enough. Arguing.

Tony and Janet exchanged a look. Arguing wasn’t exactly rare on campus, nor were there any rules against it — good luck to Fury and Friends if they tried — but it was always a little bit worrying when everyone on campus was super-powered in one way or another. Arguments that escalated too much could take out large portions of infrastructure depending on who was involved. While there was always the unspoken rule to mind one’s own business, there was the additional understanding that it was to _everyone’s_ benefit to keep tabs on things like raised voices, and to step in if needed.

So they listened as the voices came closer to where they were sitting and as first the voices and then the words themselves became recognizable.

“…pointless Midgardian game with you again. If you’re so enamored of the sport, I suggest you find a similarly brain-numbed imbecile interested in tossing a ball to no purpose.”

“Brother, you know as well as I do that the sport is simply the medium through which participants are meant to bond!”

“Ah. I see this Academy is doing you _some_ good. You’ve discovered nuance. I must congratulate the mortals, I thought such a task impossible.”

“No task is impossible when the mighty Thor is set to its success!”

Tony was torn between wincing and laughing at the sheer cluelessness of Thor’s reply. It wasn’t that the big guy was stupid _per se_ , but he didn’t have the sharpness of mind Loki had, and it was so obvious whenever the two of them were talking to each other. It was probably best that a lot of the more pointed comments never made it through Thor’s filtration system. If Thor actually picked up all of Loki’s insults, there would have been even more fights between them, all of them significantly less friendly than the one he and Janet were eavesdropping on.

“Of course not,” Loki was saying, somewhere between annoyed and amused.

“Come now, Loki,” Thor went on, his new awareness of nuance not enough to clue into Loki’s tone. “The tossing of the pigskin is an enjoyable game, and will do much to bring us closer together, as brothers and heirs to Asgard _should_ be.”

There was a heavy pause, even the sounds of footsteps halting. Mildly alarmed, Tony squinted in the direction the voices were coming from. The brothers seemed to be walking along one of the Park’s paths, and there was a barrier of tended trees and bushes between that path and the bench where Janet and Tony were sitting. A barrier which was effectively blocking any view of the brothers, and whatever sort of look Loki was leveling on Thor. Tony had spent enough time with the mage to be familiar with that sudden, heavy quality of silence, and really, Thor _ought_ to be familiar with it, too.

“It’s really quite remarkable,” Loki said at last, his tone frosty, “just how much you sound like Father. Every day it’s more like I am hearing _him_ when you open your mouth. Almost as though he put the words there for you.”

Tony wasn’t sure which one of them moved first, him or Janet, but they were both on their feet and crashing through the bushes to get at the arguing brothers. They didn’t need to confer with each other to know that if they wanted to stem a serious fight then they needed to step in _now_ , before the Asgardians got up some real momentum.

Whichever one of them leapt to their feet first, or if they’d done so together, Tony managed to fight his way through and come stumbling out onto the path on the other side first.

“Lokes!” he shouted even as he was still getting his bearings.

He’d come out of the shrubbery not too far from where the brothers were standing, actually. They were maybe half a dozen yards away — though in the opposite direction from where he’d been expecting them to be. They looked as though they’d begun squaring up when Tony came flailing out of the bushes, which only made him very grateful he and Janet had moved when they had. Loki was facing away from him, but twisting around to look at him with a rather mixed expression which balanced out to confused annoyance. When Tony glanced down, he saw that Loki was gripping his scepter tightly enough to make his knuckles blanch. Thor had to tilt round his brother in order to see Tony, and then Janet as she made her own ungraceful exit from the leafy tangle, his expression one of simple curiosity.

Tony put on a grin out of instinct more than anything else, and trotted up the path towards the two of them, focusing on Loki. “There you are,” he puffed when he was close enough to be heard without shouting. “Been looking all over the place for you. Did you forget about our little study date, or were you trying to get out of it? Just FYI, I’ll be hurt either way, so feel free to be honest with me.”

Whatever else his interruption might accomplish, it worked as a distraction. It got Loki’s face to immediately cloud into a frown, his brows drawing close together and his head tilting, giving a very clear impression that he was wondering if Tony had lost his mind.

Thor, on the other hand, was more vocal in his confusion. “A study date? I was unaware you had made such arrangements, brother.”

“And why _should_ you know?” Loki snapped. Tony blinked at just how quickly Loki picked up on and adapted to his improvised bullshit, impressed despite already knowing how quick on the uptake the guy could be. “You are not privy to every part of my life, just as I am not privy to yours. Thankfully.”

Janet had caught up with him by then, not at all winded by the wrestling match with the landscaping, to Tony’s mild humiliation. Thor looked a little torn on seeing her, obviously wanting to drop everything in order to greet her, but just as clearly not wanting to abandon the line of questioning he was on with Loki. In the end sibling loyalty/rivalry won out, as he gave Janet a quick smile, and then turned back to his brother. “It is just that I did not know you were in need of further tutoring, Loki.”

“Actually, big guy, _he_ is tutoring _me_.”

It worked to grab their attention again, with Loki whipping his head round to stare at him with open surprise and Thor tilting his head quizzically. He was pretty sure he even saw Janet glance at him out of the corner of his eye.

“ _You_ , friend Stark?”

Tony ignored how Loki raised his brows at him, as though echoing the question. “Yeah, that’s right.” He put a fist on one hip and gave his best impression of one of Natasha’s exasperated looks. “What, do you think geniuses are _completely_ infallible?”

“They’re not likely to make that mistake while you’re around, Tony,” Janet said with a poke to his ribs.

“Hey, hey!”

Janet waved off his protests, and like the true co-conspirator and wingwoman that she was, picked up on Tony’s set up with zero hesitation. She stepped past and around Loki, disregarding any lingering tensions hanging between the brothers, and looped one of her arms through Thor’s. “C’mon, muscle man,” she said, steering him back up the path like a tugboat. “Let’s leave the nerds to it. Lemme get my gear and _I’ll_ play football with you.”

While Janet was pulling the Asgardian twice her size away, Tony mirrored her move, sweeping in and linking his arm with Loki’s. It was probably pure surprise which got the mage to walk with him rather than pull his arm free immediately. “And don’t think I’ll be letting you out of my sight, Lokes, if you’re going to wander off and leave me to my own devices at the first opportunity.”

“Norns prevent a future where _that_ is allowed to happen.”

“Well, if you weren’t such a sly, slippery character, it wouldn’t be an issue, would it? And the worlds could rest easy knowing I had appropriate supervision.”

They walked a little further before Tony tossed a look over his shoulder. He listened carefully, but there was no sound of either Thor or Janet, and neither of them tended to be very quiet. “I think it’s safe, now.”

“Indeed,” Loki agreed drily. “But can the same be said for the bug woman? Thor is not known for his gentleness when it comes to physical displays, nor in showing the greatest wisdom in moderating his strength.”

Tony turned back to Loki, raising a brow at him. “You’ve never seen Janet when she gets into her football spirit, have you? She is five foot four inches of powerhouse, with every bit of team spirit ever experienced by mankind concentrated in that little body. I’d be more worried about _Thor’s_ safety, honestly. He’s got no idea what he’s gotten himself in for.”

Her football mode was even more terrifying than her mobster mode, which to Tony’s mind was saying something.

Loki’s lip twitched, finally lightening his expression. “Is that right? I’d be tempted to go back and watch their little game, in that case.”

“You could, but then our deception would be exposed. And that would just be mean, undoing all of that hard, well thought out work.”

He snorted, giving Tony a look, but did not deign to answer that claim directly. “I’m certain we could manage to both witness the spectacle and keep Thor from discovering us. From the sound of it, he would have his hands full and wouldn’t be terribly observant.”

“And leave me to my unsupervised self? What would become of the Academy if that were allowed?”

“I did say ‘we,’ Stark,” he said, while at the same time gently retrieving his arm from Tony’s. Tony had almost forgotten that they’d been linked together, but he felt the absence of it quickly enough. It felt awkward to stand so close to Loki while not actually touching him.

Rather than turn round and stride off in pursuit of his brother and Janet, though, Loki continued along the way Tony had steered them, walking at a more leisurely pace. Surprised, Tony had to skip a little to catch up with him. He didn’t complain when Tony drew up beside him.

For a while he didn’t say anything, uncertain of what Loki was planning on doing next and where he fit in on those plans. It didn’t look as though he’d been serious about going to spy on Janet and Thor in hopes of seeing Thor get trounced by a tiny human — for which Tony was grateful, really. Those two were still officially dating and Tony didn’t feel like getting an eyeful of any private moments. Possibly that was Loki’s reasoning for not playing spy as well. It was hard to tell.

But if Loki had some other task planned, he wasn’t rushing much. In fact he wasn’t rushing at all. He was walking at a pace that even Tony thought was relaxed, and that was with significantly shorter legs. Loki didn’t seem in a hurry to either to get wherever he was going or to start a conversation, so Tony kept his mouth shut and waited, walking beside him while he was still allowed to do so.

When he noticed that Loki’s route was actually looping on itself, just sticking to the pathways which would keep them in the Park rather than take them anywhere, Tony decided to risk a question.

“So, uh. What was it you were up to before Thor decided to try and drag you off to a rousing game of catch?”

Loki glanced at him, almost as though he’d forgotten he’d had a human trotting along beside him all this time. After a moment he shrugged. “This. A stroll.”

Tony blinked. “That’s it?”

“Were you expecting something more nefarious?”

“Well, a little more engaging, at least. I mean, no offence, but you don’t seem like the type of guy who takes an awful lot of time out of his day to commune with nature.”

“If one wished to commune with nature, one merely needs to find the walking tree and remove his headphones.”

“Fair enough,” Tony conceded. “But that just further solidifies my point of there being nothing of interest for you to just be walking around a park.”

“Which further proves how very little you _actually_ know about me,” Loki huffed, a shade of his usual, superior tone creeping back into the words.

“Not for lack of trying.”

Loki went abruptly quiet at that, and for a minute or two they walked again in silence. As they did, Tony tried to see the appeal an afternoon stroll might have for someone like Loki. It’s not that it wasn’t a _nice_ park, especially since they’d gotten a few students in who were heavily invested in any and all plant life being happy and thriving. There were plenty of well-tended trees, shrubs, and flowers, the paths were laid out in ways which gave the best views and to made the Park seem much larger than it actually was, and there were more than enough benches scattered around for students to sit a while and enjoy some peace.

Which might be the Park’s biggest draw, now that he thought about it. What he deemed ‘boring’ someone else would simply think of as restful. The Academy, while no doubt acting as something of a haven for a lot of the people it had drawn to it, was far from quiet. It was a place where super-powered, enhanced, mutant or just odd and special humans, as well as aliens and otherworldy creatures could all gather together. That kind of mix did not lend itself to a peaceful atmosphere. Explosions were common, as were people flying via various methods, other people phasing in and out of reality — and walls — and there was never any knowing if one would wake up in the same shape as when they went to sleep. Plus all of the supposedly normal shenanigans which were guaranteed to happen whenever a large collection of fairly young people were all brought together in one place.

It would be a nightmare to anyone who was easily over stimulated.

Thankfully, Tony tended to swing the other direction on that. He craved stimulation, needed it in order to concentrate properly. Trying to work in silence was more a detriment to him than any number of distractions, driving him up the wall as too much of his focus was left unoccupied and it turned in on itself. The idea of being able to relax in that sort of state was alien to him.

Which probably made it fitting that Loki would enjoy it, though Tony had always thought that his brain, like Tony’s, was prone to tearing itself to pieces if left to run on its own too long without distractions.

Of course, he didn’t have a hyperactive older brother whom he’d had to deal with his entire life, so the coping mechanisms were probably a bit different.

“So what was it exactly that Janet and I just broke up?” he asked, watching Loki out of the corner of his eye.

He didn’t respond to the question much by way of his expression, having slipped into one of his more stony faced masks. Even his voice was a little flat when he answered. “I thought the situation obvious, and that you had interpreted it perfectly well. My brother, in his enthusiasm for physical tests of skill and in engaging my attention, decided that one of your inane Midgardian sports would be a wise way to do both at once. My dislike of the idea, of spending any time with him, or in having my day’s activities decided by someone else did not seem to register with him in the slightest, and he was continuing to insist that he knew how best for me to spend my time. Until your arrival, that is.”

When he seemed to decide that someone _else_ would have the best idea of how Loki ought to spend his time. Tony wasn’t sure he liked the implication that Thor just didn’t want Loki to be left to his own devices — though he supposed he could see the line of logic that brought him there. It felt awfully reminiscent of how Director Fury viewed Tony and his time, actually, and he knew firsthand how annoying _that_ felt.

“Yeah, I was picking up on that just fine,” he said carefully. He considered the two of them friends, but Loki was notoriously touchy over some subjects, chief among them being his family and how well they did or did not get along. There was a good chance that prodding him over it would have him closing off completely and leaving Tony wondering, possibly even doing damage to the tentative friendship they’d been building up.

But what good would it do to just ignore problems?

“It seemed like Big n’ Blond was up to more than just trying to convert you into a football fan, though. Like he had some ulterior motives.”

Rather than retreat the way Tony worried he would, Loki snorted out a laugh. “Yes, he’s not particularly subtle, is he? He really ought to leave the obfuscation to those who know how to do it best.” He gave a little twirl of his scepter and cocked his head, as though to bring more attention to his golden horns.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, eyeing the horns. It was hard not to laugh. “I think it’s kind of cute, the older brother trying to act a little bit more like the younger one. If he starts wearing those horns and carrying a cane around with him everywhere, though, I’ll be disturbed.”

“As would I and every other Asgardian in existence.” Loki laughed a little, and Tony perked up on hearing it. It was hard to make the Prince laugh sometimes — at least genuinely. Ironic or sarcastic laughter was easy enough to get out of him, but that never sounded right. Tony much preferred it when Loki sounded as though he actually _enjoyed_ it when he laughed.

Tilting his head at the mage as they strolled, he decided to push his luck a little further. “Any idea what that ulterior motive might actually _be?_ ”

Loki waved his hand dismissively. “Much along the lines of what Odin had attempted with that ridiculous assignment. In fact, it may have been our father who has been encouraging him to engage me so much.” Loki cast him a look. “He wishes to have me join him in physical activities, and those which emphasize strength, teamwork or a competitive mindset are considered best. He does this, I believe, in order to encourage me to think and behave more like him.”

Tony couldn’t keep the incredulous look off of his face. He looked Loki up and down, and decided that no, imagining Thor dressing like Loki wasn’t the most horrifying thing. Imagining _Loki_ in a blond wig and shouting about heroism and camaraderie was.

“Uh huh, and how long were you going to make him work at that before you started making him think it was actually working?”

Loki abruptly halted, a look of dawning glee on his face as he turned towards Tony. “The thought hadn’t occurred to me yet,” he admitted, a touch of pleasure warming the words. “And what a shame it would have been if it never had.”

Tony smiled, pleased with himself. “It sure would. Let me know when you think you’ll be ‘giving in’— or when you let Thor in on the joke. I’d like to heat up some popcorn for both events.”

Loki cocked his head at Tony, one brow rising as he regarded him with amusement and what looked like honest curiosity. “I’ll do my best to accommodate. I wonder a little at your ready turn of mind on the matter. From what I understand, you’re an only child, with no sibling rivalries to provide you with experiences in my situation.”

Sometimes it was hard to remember how old Thor and Loki were. They both acted like a couple of guys just out of their teens most of the time, but occasionally there was a reminder of the relative time scales between the Earth born and the Asgardians. Loki’s stare was one of them. He wasn’t even asking a particularly probing question, but the deep green of his eyes tugged at Tony, alerting his base lizard brain that he was face to face with something dangerous. Something which could, if it had a mind to, consume him.

The fact that the rest of his brain seemed amenable to the idea he put down to his own adrenaline-craving personality.

Whatever the danger, real or imagined, Tony answered almost without thought. “No siblings, maybe, but I’m familiar enough with the position of a lot being expected of you, and nothing you do ever being enough. I can understand how much that would wear on someone, and what sorts of small revenges one would take against the one causing the problem.” Tony blinked, the effect of Loki’s stare wearing off a little. “Honestly, I’m just glad that I _don’t_ have any brothers or sisters. I can only imagine how much my father would have used that against me — us against each other — just to drive us harder and get what _he_ wanted.”

Loki’s look softened slightly as he spoke, watching him more with a speculative eye than an interrogative one. At Tony’s observation, he smiled. “I can only imagine what it might have been like if you had siblings as well. _One_ of you is quite enough.”

“Just barely enough for you to handle, eh, Gorgeous?”

“Hmph.”

They grew quiet, and Tony took a minute to really look around them. He often came here with Janet for their lunches, but going anywhere with Janet wasn’t likely to be very quiet or give one reason to focus on anything _other_ than what she was saying. So while Tony had come and spent plenty of time in the Park, he’d never taken the time to just… look around and enjoy it.

It was actually quite pretty. It was still early enough in summer that it wasn’t sweltering, but far enough into the year that every tree and shrub was thick with dark, glossy leaves. Flowers were dotted around, offering splashes of color and the unobtrusive buzz of bees busy at their work. A light breeze blew through, making the dappled light and shadows shift and dance. To his own surprise, Tony found himself relaxing, soothed by the gentle sounds and peaceful surroundings.

When Loki spoke again, he did so softly, as though he too were affected by the quiet of the Park “In a related matter, what precisely were _you_ up to in interrupting us?”

“Well, I would have thought that was perfectly obvious, smart guy. My faithful wingwoman and I were executing a daring rescue.”

“A rescue?” The smirk and raised brow combo was a very unfair expression for Loki to use. How was Tony meant to think straight with that pointed at him? “A hero rescuing a villain from another hero?”

“Oh, come on, ‘villain’ is a little strong…”

Loki snorted.

“Scoundrel, maybe. You’ve got the right kind of look for ‘scoundrel.’”

“It’s a title which would fit you just as well.”

He shrugged. “I’m cool with that. I’m hardly seen as the paragon of goodness and righteousness, either, you know.”

“Speaking as one who has done more ‘villainy’ than you could possibly manage in a single lifetime, such accusations are puzzling at best.” He paused, turned his gaze back over the slowly swaying trees, golden horns gleaming in the changing light. “Though if you keep going about saving ne’er-do-wells, your reputation can’t help but be tarnished.”

“Eh, don’t worry about that. I’ll only make exceptions for _you_ , Lokes. You can thank me for my loving devotion with another coffee.”

Loki might have smiled at that. It was hard to tell when the guy refused to acknowledge his pledge in the slightest, and instead decided to just start walking again, forcing Tony to hop to keep up. He didn’t mind, really. He was pretty sure he’d gotten the Asgardian’s mind to lighten, and might have given him a new project in the form of pranking his brother.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone!
> 
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> If anyone wants to come say hi or chat about nerdy things, hmu! ♥


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, a huge thank you to [dreamkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist) / [ifall](https://ifall.tumblr.com/) for her beautiful work on the graphics! ♥ ♥ ♥

Sometimes it was nice to just rise above the general chaos of life and get a little bit of perspective. It was so easy to get mired in the everyday minutiae and lose track of what was really important, what one’s priorities _actually_ were. Priorities like making fantastic tech no one dreamed was possible, or taking some time to really enjoy the fruits of one’s labors, rather than just handing them over to someone else.

Things like fine tuning the balance in the boots of his Iron Man suit so they stopped flipping him upside down whenever he stopped paying attention.

It was one of those little things which really didn’t take all that much time or effort to fix. It was just a case of _finding_ that time when the Academy seemed hell bent on taking up as much of it as it could. So much of Tony’s day was taken up in training, studying, inventing, and generally running around dealing with all of the _Academy’s_ problems that even simple, piddly sorts of tasks on his _own_ to-do list got forgotten or pushed aside. The amount of work, _his own work_ , which had accumulated in favor of running errands for Fury was frankly disturbing. Sure, he could see the importance of helping out the Academy and SHIELD, but it wasn’t like he was the only scientist or inventor on call.

He might be the _best_ , but that didn’t mean they had to rely _only_ on him for their security and gadgets.

And it wasn’t even like he got any sort of respect, despite all the work he put in around the place…

Even when taking some much deserved and long overdue personal time, though, it wasn’t like he was allowed to entirely forget about SHIELD or Fury. He was hanging out far above the ground, enjoying the clean breeze and the feeling of not being hemmed in on every side… but the Academy still lay sprawled out below him, a constant reminder of what awaited him when he came back to earth.

 _Technically_ there was nothing stopping him from flying off premises. It wasn’t as though he were a prisoner.

Technically.

But if there was one thing he’d learned about SHIELD, it was that it was the most paranoid organization he’d ever worked with. Which considering some of the competition, was quite the accomplishment. Fury liked to keep close tabs on everyone at the Academy — which made sense. It was probably a good 50% of the reason the Academy existed at all. But if Tony left the school grounds — or the perimeter in this case — without Fury knowing explicitly _why_ and _where_ he was going, then Tony could expect a call coming through on his suit, demanding answers. He supposed he ought to be a little grateful that he was called directly, rather than having agents being sent after him. Keeping that from happening was the only reason he picked up those calls when they came in. Having agents sent after him like he was a misbehaving child would just be embarrassing.

With everything he’d done for Fury and his little club, he’d have thought he’d earned better treatment than an overactive toddler.

 Or a borderline villain.

Hovering high above the ground, Tony’s face scrunched into a scowl at the intrusive thought. Because that was the running theory, wasn’t it? That spiel Fury gave whenever someone new was brought in, the one about gathering people who had extraordinary talent and potential, and how the Academy was meant to train them up into ‘the heroes they were always meant to be’ was… well, not a lie. But not the whole truth, either.

The running theory a lot of them at the Academy had — and accepted as truth by some, like Natasha — was that the primary focus of SHIELD when it came to the population at the school was control. They might believe that every single member of the Academy had the potential to be great heroes, but they _also_ believed that they could turn out to be terrible villains, and that they were _just_ as likely to go that way without some sort of oversight. _Their_ oversight, specifically. The Academy might be doing a lot for them in terms of training and team building, but they didn’t _trust_ their students worth a damn. Unless they had direct control over all of them, then as far as SHIELD was concerned, they were all a step away from becoming threats which would have to be dealt with.

As much as he would like to believe otherwise, Tony didn’t think that either SHIELD or Fury would have much hesitation in taking any of them out. Whatever role the Academy was trying to cast itself into for now, if any of them became a threat, then they would be stomped down without compunction.

It made sense. It was practical. Still didn’t mean Tony had to like it, or appreciate the organization’s habit of wringing their students dry of everything they had to offer in the meantime.

Tony shook his head, determined not to spend the little time he had to himself and his own projects focusing completely on Fury, SHIELD, or the Academy. They already monopolized more than enough of it as it was, thank you very much.

At least the adjustments to the boot repulsors seemed to have gone well. He hadn’t been consciously correcting anything about his posture or positioning for a while, and he was still hovering steadily above the Quad — and he hadn’t been flipped so he was hanging upside down, either.

 _That_ had been an embarrassing experience he wasn’t in much of a hurry to repeat.

With that sorted out, it left him floating high above the campus with even less to do than before. He was fine with that. Technically there was still plenty he could be working on — projects which had been neglected and which really ought to have gotten his attention before a slight issue with his boot repulsors… But the idea of going back down to earth didn’t appeal in the least. Being up here, without having at least three people harping on him at any given point in time, was far too nice to give up on already. Just a little longer wouldn’t hurt…

Doing his best to think of nothing at all, Tony made lazy swoops back and forth over the campus, classifying it as an overdue shakedown of some new systems in his suit. Really, though, he was just lazing. If the suit had allowed for it, he would have been on his back and letting himself drift through the air like if he had been in a pool. Unfortunately the thrust of the repulsors made it so that he couldn’t really recline without being at a high speed — or doing some sort of contortion which would make the supposedly relaxed position very _not_ relaxed. Maybe he could spend a little time designing a suit whose primary function _wasn’t_ battle. Maybe he could design himself something like an Iron Man suit which could be used more for play. A ‘leisure suit.’ A suit was what you made of it, of course, and there had been plenty of times when Tony had used his suits for less than aggressive tasks. More like a high-tech party machine, but still…

He let his mind wander, thinking up fixtures he would put on a leisure Iron Man suit if he ever got around to making one. Less heavy on the artillery, obviously, and packed with more features like it were a luxury car…

He was just putting some of the final touches on his probably-never-to-be suit when there was a commotion below loud enough to reach him, high as he was.

Curious, Tony flipped round and stabilized, scanning the ground for the source of the hubbub. None of the sounds which were making it up to him sounded particularly violent — no horrified screams or crashes of breaking concrete — so he wasn’t _too_ concerned, but it would still be best to keep any  sorts of conflicts from getting out of hand.

It took him a minute to spot what was going on. In his lazy swooping back and forth over the campus he’d more or less covered every section, even with how sprawling it had become. Just now he was hovering over what he had come to think of as ‘the Asgardian District.’ It was where the mini Bifrost had been found, as well as a pretentious golden statue, and where their resident Asgardians had chosen to build any and all of their new buildings. Which they did, very quickly and with a lot of gold. Really, ‘golden and pretentious’ seemed to be the mainstays of Asgardian style, both in architecture and in people. Everyone on campus had had the pleasure of meeting several of the aliens, and it was pretty clear that their first few examples of the race — Thor, Loki, Amora — were more the norm than the exception.

Every Asgardian whom Tony had met so far, while certainly having their own unique personalities, had a certain similarity, as well, which could be most generously called ‘pretentious.’ ‘Rampant and casual egotism’ came closer to the mark, in Tony’s opinion. Possibly it was just something which came out when they were interacting with humans, who must seem like a baby species to them.

Didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying as hell, though.

Highlighting the pretentious attitudes was the near ubiquitous habit of incorporating gold into practically everything they wore. Even Loki wasn’t innocent of that, and aesthetically he stood out the most from his fellows, tending towards dark colors and covering up more skin than he revealed. But the gold still made its appearance: in his set of horns — it wasn’t even a helmet, just pure affectation — and in his scepter, as well as in little highlights in his clothes.

Similarly, every single building the Asgardians constructed utilized gold heavily. On sunny days it was hard to look in this direction without wearing eye protection. There must have been some sort of protective magic over everything, or they would have had a lot more problems with random assholes trying to strip out the whole area.

It took a small flash down below to call Tony’s attention to exactly where the trouble was, which he blamed entirely on said shiny gold buildings.

A figure was ducking around the side of the forge, moving fast, but in that quick start and stop way of someone searching. Tony squinted, triggering the visor he wore to zoom in. It was Amora — sorry, _the Enchantress_ — who was rushing around the buildings and, yes, definitely looking for something. Or some _one_ , probably. Whoever it was, they weren’t going to have a very good time when she found them. He didn’t think he had ever seen her look so furious before. She usually tried to keep her face smooth whenever she was talking with Tony, or any male for that matter. But she had slipped up on that often enough for him to know what an angry Amora looked like, and whatever had gotten her pissed this time was far and away more than had even been managed before. It was probably a good thing that weather magic wasn’t a universal talent among Asgardians, or the Academy would have found itself in the middle of a typhoon.

He watched her for a minute, wondering who it was she was looking for and why, and glad that he was far enough away to avoid any sort of charms she might have going at the moment. He didn’t particularly mind when Amora decided to try her magic on his brain — but that was part of the issue. He _didn’t mind_ , and therefore was prone to being careless around her. Distance was usually the best defense.

After about a minute he allowed his visor to zoom out again, and scanned the surrounding area, looking for the target of Amora’s ire.

It took a little longer than expected to actually find them. Tony would have thought his height would have given him all the advantage he needed, but he was on the verge of flipping over to the infrared when he finally spotted something. Another flash, like the one which had first called his attention, this one green tinted, alerted him to both the ‘where’ and the ‘whom’ at the same time.

Loki, in perhaps the most cartoonish display of his own sneaky reputation Tony had ever seen him exhibit, was ducking around the various Asgardian structures, on the run from Amora.

Tony covered his grin — totally uselessly, considering no one could see it when he was up here and with his faceplate down. He couldn’t help the smile, though. There was a lot about Loki’s reputation which he was fairly certain was either exaggerated or fabricated entirely, much of the time by Loki himself. He’d never seen Loki as particularly untrustworthy, for example, if for no other reason than all of the lies and tricks the mage indulged in were so comically easy to see through. How was anyone meant to take him seriously as a threat when he always went with the same sort of fibbing as a twelve-year-old? True, Tony might just be being lulled into a false sense of security by that, Loki playing some sort of long game without giving any _real_ hints… But he doubted it.

Just look at him.

It was interesting to watch the two magicians dance around each other. Amora never got a clear bead on where Loki was, but it was obvious she knew he was still _close_ , rather than having taken off to some other part of the campus. Frankly, in her shoes Tony probably would have assumed that some time ago and left the vicinity. But Loki, rather than having a clear priority of ‘get away,’ seemed determined to stick around, keeping an eye on the Enchantress.

After about a full minute of watching the two of them, Tony decided to satisfy his curiosity and headed down.

He was careful about his timing. His suit wasn’t exactly quiet, but he wanted it so that Amora didn’t notice him when he came down. Thankfully it wasn’t _too_ hard, as Amora’s ability to pin down where Loki was, was severely hampered by _his_ ability to teleport a good distance away when he wanted to.

The mage noticed his approach long before he landed next to him, swinging round with his scepter half-raised before processing who it was that had descended upon him.

Tony flipped up the faceplate of the suit to give him a full grin. “Hey, Gorgeous.” He tilted slightly, looking in the direction of the far distant but still searching Amora before giving Loki a knowing look. “In need of a getaway vehicle?” He tapped the side of the suit.

  


Loki gave him a briefly surprised look, one side of his mouth curling up. “Are you offering me a _ride?_ ”

Before Tony could recover from the unexpected double entendre, Loki tossed a glance of his own over his shoulder. “Your timing is impeccable, and I gladly accept your magnanimous offer.” Without any more preamble than that, Loki closed in on him, throwing his arms around Tony’s neck, body pressing close to him.

Tony’s brain short-circuited for a second, his entire body going suddenly very hot inside the suit. He wasn’t sure if he should be grateful for or cursing the fact that he just happened to be wearing a _full_ suit and couldn’t feel a damn thing.

“Up, Armor Man.” Their faces were closer, as well, the words spoken warmly against Tony’s cheek.

Oh, he’d been wrong. He _could_ feel things.

He gave one of his own suggestive grins — or what he hoped was suggestive, when internally he was stumbling over himself. Slipping one arm round Loki’s waist and pulling him even closer — couldn’t go dropping a foreign prince, now — he kicked on the boot’s repulsors. “Up it is.”

Up they went, Tony putting on a little more speed than he would normally, in interests of staying out of Amora’s sight and avoid whatever it was she intended to unleash on Loki.

Even through the armor, Tony could tell that Loki tightened his grip a bit, shifting his focus from being up close and very _personal_ to just holding on and not falling. Tony smirked just a little. He’d gotten talked down to a lot about the usefulness of his suits by the mage, always in that carelessly mocking way which meant he didn’t actually mean any of it… But Loki couldn’t really fly on his own. He could do a lot, but flying under his own power wasn’t one of them. Whenever he wanted to make a getaway by air he had to utilize some outside source. Like Tony.

He wasn’t a nervous flier, though. To be fair, even if Tony _did_ drop him, it probably wouldn’t do much damage. Asgardians might as well be made of bricks for all the impact damage they took. It didn’t take long once they were up in the air for Loki to pipe up, knocking on the armor with one end of his scepter to make sure he had Tony’s attention.

“Don’t leave the area! Get some height so we can watch what happens!”

Tony slowed their flight path, which he had been keeping relatively low in order to avoid being spotted, heading out of the Asgardian District and into the Academy campus proper. “I thought you were trying to avoid getting skinned, weren’t you? Shouldn’t we be showing as little of ourselves as possible?”

“Oh, certainly I am avoiding retaliation for now,” he agreed. Then he gave Tony a grin which made him glad he had yet to ever be on an opposing side to the mage. “But I would very much like to witness what it is she will want retaliation _for_.”

Tony was intrigued — and concerned, but mostly intrigued. Whatever it was Amora was chasing him for hadn’t even happened yet? Or he _had_ done something, but something even worse was scheduled to happen? He probably should be more concerned for _Amora_ , then, and try to rescue her from what it was _Loki_ had done, but…

“Fair enough. But this thing isn’t exactly subtle, I don’t know if you noticed? Eventually she’s going to look up.”

Loki _‘tsked,’_ which was not a fair sound to make when he was so close to Tony’s ear. “Does this contraption not have a… a ‘stealth mode’? I would have thought such a feature would have been one of many you would install as quickly as possible.”

It was a dig meant to get a rise out of him. He just raised a brow at the man in his arms. “I was a little more focused on things like offensive power. Not all of us are quite as sneaky as you.”

“Just as well. None of you would be half so talented as I.”

Tony snickered. He had his own ideas on the subject, but he wasn’t about to start a debate about it.

When he refused to respond directly, Loki sighed — rather dramatically, Tony thought. “Very well. Since your armor is so ill prepared for anything _other_ than being offensive—“

“Very funny.”

“—I will provide the necessary obfuscation.”

“Yes, well, you _are_ good at that…” Tony trailed off as he watched, a little disturbed, as Loki melted out of existence. It was like watching the Cheshire Cat pull his disappearing act. If he couldn’t still feel Loki’s weight in his arms, he’d probably assume he’d done an unnecessarily dramatic teleportation. He didn’t get long to think about it though, as he watched the same thing happen to _himself_. That was a little more unsettling, even if he felt nothing at all as his own body disappeared. And it was more disorienting than he would have thought to not be able to see himself. It made him a little dizzy, honestly.   

“Okay, I’m not gonna lie, this is kinda weird. Since when has ‘invisibility’ been one of your things, anyway?”

Without being able to see him as it was happening, the puff of breath against his ear when Loki chuckled startled him. Like hearing someone in the dark, close and warm but with no visuals, just waiting to see what happened next…

The suit really was starting to get too warm. Obviously the climate controls needed some work, too.

“Not invisibility,” the bodiless voice informed him. “Illusion. When one knows how to utilize it properly, it is far more powerful than anyone gives it credit for.”

It also made it much more threatening than anyone would give it credit for. Tony made a mental note, and hummed his understanding. “Seems a shame, though. Picked up a cute guy and now I can’t even see him.”

There was a pause, in which Tony could only imagine the sort of look that was being leveled on him.

“Well. I’m sure the charm of my personality will make up for it.” His voice was surprisingly neutral, considering. He felt Loki shift slightly in his grip, and he held on a little tighter. It was _really_ disconcerting to not be able to _see_ who he was holding, especially with his sense of touch muffled by the suit. “Now that we are properly obscured, take us back. I don’t want to miss when the witch discovers what I did.”

“As you wish,” he said, and very carefully put them back on a return path to the District where Amora was presumably still searching. At first he worried that, effectively invisible though they might be, Amora would still become aware of them simply because of the noise of the suit. He didn’t bother to bring the concern up, though. Surely Loki would have thought of that detail as well, and compensated for it. It wasn’t worth worrying about.

Amora was still there and still looking for Loki, though from the look of things she was about ready to give up on the endeavor. Her searching had slowed quite a bit, and when Tony zoomed in on her face her expression had become less murderous and more pinched into a simmering scowl of rage. It was a shift from her usual look. It was hard to imagine a face like that drawing in the crowds of guys she usually got, lolling tongues first.

“What exactly did you do that’s got her ready to roast you?” He kept his voice pitched low, even though they were still a good distance above her. There was no knowing for sure how effective any auditory masking Loki had on them was, or what sort of detection magic Amora might have to hear even more, or how they might interact… Ugh. Magic gave him a headache.

“Nothing which should have engendered _this_ much ire,” Loki’s voice said primly. “A simple disagreement, as usually crops up between us. It seems that she is much more sensitive than I expected to suggestions that she is not as powerful as she thinks.”

“Ah,” he said, more confident he wouldn’t be heard when Loki’s volume suggested there was no danger of that. “You two get into another pissing match over who’s the bestest at magic?”

“For the most part,” Loki admitted after a slight pause, and his tone got Tony to glance in his direction before he remembered that there was nothing to see. “To be a little more precise, she accused me of attempting a… a project, for which I possessed neither talent nor hope of success, and sighted her own numerous — if temporary — successes in a similar vein. She was, in a word, threatened by what she _believes_ I am working on, and decided to trash talk me as a method of regaining some confidence.”

“Sounds like her,” Tony agreed. He wondered what it was Amora felt threatened about, specifically, which would motivate her enough to give Loki a bad time. Given Loki’s description, there was one obvious thing, but it still baffled him why Amora would feel threatened by _Loki…_

“And what did you say to her?”

There was a sniff in the empty air next to him. “Simply that if she were as skilled as she believed, then she should need no magic whatsoever to accomplish her goals — as that was what _I_ am doing, and appear to be having much more success than she ever managed _with_ her charms.”

Owch. Yeah, Tony had little doubt that what they’d had a tiff over was Amora’s penchant for ensnaring men’s hearts left and right. So saying she couldn’t manage the heart without literally taking over the brains of her targets as well, while Loki could get by on nothing but his _personal_ charm… He could see why she’d gotten so riled up. Especially since he was fairly certain he had been much less polite in his phrasing on the subject when speaking to Amora directly. There was never mistaking the animosity between those two even at the best of times, and Loki could be kinda… acidic when he wanted to be.

“Uh huh. And what exactly is it we’re waiting for now? Is she going to turn orange or something to give her an extra challenge in attracting attention? _Positive_ attention?”

“Now what kind of kinsman would I be to do that?” Loki actually managed to sound reasonably put out by the suggestion. “That would be poor form as a fellow Asgardian _and_ a fellow mage. No, I intend to _help_ , seeing as her own skills are so lacking.”

“Help? How are you—?”

“Oh look, here comes her first suitor.”

Tony looked down. Even with nothing there to see, he had been staring where there _ought_ to have been a Loki staring back at him, and must have missed someone new coming on to the scene. He looked and saw…

Nothing. Just Amora, clearly giving up on her search at last, after finding no trace of her prey. Tony scanned about, wondering if the new ‘suitor’ had only just come into view and was still making their way to her… But no. He couldn’t see anyone.

He was about to ask Loki about it when he finally spotted _something_. He probably wouldn’t have, except that Amora herself bent down for said something.

He zoomed in on the scene, confirming what he thought he was seeing.

“A cat?”

“So far.” There was no way to mistake the strained note of expectant humor running through Loki’s voice.

A little confused, Tony watched as Amora stroked the stray feline, a handsome orange tabby, clean and well fed enough to probably not _actually_ be a stray. Whatever he was, he was eating up the attention Amora was giving him, standing up on hind legs to meet her hand, circling her again and again in his eagerness for more attention, tail trailing over her calves as a constant point of contact. Tony was fairly certain he would have been able to hear it purr even where they hung suspended if it hadn’t been for the suit’s boosters. The fuzzy little thing certainly seemed to be in kitty-love with the Enchantress… and she didn’t seem to mind, but…

“So far?”

It didn’t take long before another cat came speeding up to Amora, tail lashing and maw flapping in what must have been a series of loud, demanding _mwops_. Amora looked startled at the sudden doubling of her audience, but her smile said that she didn’t mind the addition. Tony didn’t blame her. How often did cats — the four legged kind — wander onto campus? Two at a time that were so friendly was a little like winning the lottery. Assuming one had no allergies to deal with for the privilege. She probably felt blessed.

But she didn’t have the same view Tony and Loki had. If she had, she would have been high tailing it already.

Two cats became three, and then became three cats and two dogs as a pair of Dalmatians came tearing up. At the arrivals Amora looked alarmed, but Tony was impressed with how little attention the animals were paying to _each other._ They were all too focused on Amora. A fact which she might have appreciated more if she hadn’t been drowning in dog slobber and had three cats all trying simultaneously to crawl into a nonexistent lap. In the time it took her to stand and back up a confused step, four more cats and three dogs all arrived, some trailing leashes, one or two of the cats very clearly strays.

Tony bit his lip as Amora’s eyes went round as saucers and she raised her hands, as though fending off the oncoming tidal wave of critters. But they kept coming, heedless of her alarm and all demanding affection. If it had just been cats and dogs, that would have been bad enough.

But then the less common ‘pet’ type animals starting showing up.

The first to arrive were a pair of ferrets, hopping little bodies romping straight for her — and then _up_ her as they climbed her sparse clothing with more success than the cats had before. Tony actually heard the shriek at that development.

Soon Amora had even more to contend with than fur-noodles trying to nest in her hair.

Because then there were hamsters. And mice. And rats. And lizards of various sizes and shapes. A few chickens made an appearance, which almost made Tony choke on stifled laughter — until he saw the first flash of colorful plumage in the sky. Parakeets, finches, canaries, parrots, a pair of cockatiels, at least one macaw and a damned _eagle_ all swooped in on the scene, adding a new dimension to the chaos.

And still, none of the animals were paying each other any mind, focusing only on Amora, and even that attention didn’t appear to be aggressive. It was all affectionate — it was just _a lot_. Even the birds weren’t attacking; they were just trying to find a place on Amora’s head and shoulders steady enough and not too full of ferret to land on.

Whatever their intentions, Amora was _not_ pleased with the attention — either the type or the amount, and was doing her best to make an escape without stepping on the smallest members of her sudden fan club.

She was making some steady backwards progress. Until she ran into the horse.

That was the last straw, apparently. Giving up on any pretense of dignity, she took off at a dead run, the menagerie following close behind.

It was also the last straw for Tony, who burst out laughing so hard that he altered the hover he’d set to watch the drama unfold.

By the time he’d calmed down enough to no longer be putting them in danger of plummeting, Loki had allowed the illusion to melt away. Tony wasn’t able to wipe away the little tears in the corners of his eyes, but he could still see well enough to make out Loki’s wide grin and dancing eyes. There might have also been a pleased flush over the bridge of his nose, but that was harder to discern.

“Oh, that was _mean_ ,” he got out between fading chuckles. “Funny as hell, but _mean_.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Loki puffed up with pride, as far from apologetic as it was possible to imagine. “She insisted there was no ‘pet’ whatsoever on Midgard that she could not have. So taking her at her word, I helped to make less of a liar of her.”

“Oh my god…” Tony coughed, still working out the last of his laughter. He really shouldn’t be laughing quite so much at Amora. She had gotten swarmed by what looked like every domesticated animal within a mile, and the animals themselves were going to need to be taken care of soon… But there was something terribly cathartic seeing her get swamped by _too much_ affection.

Before he could clear up enough to talk properly — and maybe ask Loki some details on the spell or whatever it was he had used — JARVIS piped in Tony’s earpiece.

“Sir, we’re getting messages from Director Fury, inquiring if we have any knowledge as to the sudden influx of animals on campus.”

Tony did his best to sober up, to concentrate. Right, yeah, Fury. He’d probably want to know what was going on. Though Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to give him the full story of what had happened. He doubted that Loki would get in _much_ trouble for pulling a prank on the Enchantress… Nothing had been set on fire, nothing had blown up, and no one who wasn’t used to it had been shrunken to insect size or sent to alternative dimensions. Really, it was hardly a blip on the scale of things which _could_ have happened.

The powers in charge could be finicky about how the students behaved, though. Which seemed kind of counterproductive.

“Hey, Lokes, how long is Amora likely to keep attracting the local wildlife?”

The mage pulled a face, and for a second Tony thought he might refuse to answer. But he must have heard J’s voice, if not what he said exactly, because he answered after a brief consideration. “An hour at the outside. And no wildlife, only pets. It cuts down significantly on the number of rats. And pigeons.”

Tony winced. Right, that would have sucked significantly more than a wave of escapee lap dogs. And it didn’t even take into consideration the squirrels.

“J, tell Fury it’s an experiment of mine gone a little overboard. Everything’ll be back to normal in about an hour. …Maybe a little more to get all the critters corralled.”

“Understood, sir,” JARVIS replied placidly, though it was probably straining his servers to _not_ make some sort of caustic comment. “And should he inquire as to the meaning behind the animals’ insistence on the Enchantress’s company?”

Tony shrugged the shoulder which wasn’t supporting a lanky mage. “Hell if I know, J. Must just be her natural charm working better than she expected.”

“Understood, sir,” the AI repeated, and showing a level of restraint which frankly worried him, didn’t comment on Tony’s choice to take on the blame for Loki’s prank.

Loki, on the other hand, was leveling a look on him which clearly telegraphed that he hadn’t missed that detail. “Spoilsport,” he grumbled at him. “Did you have to tell him so quickly? It would have been entertaining to watch them try and solve the riddle on their own for a while.”

“Maybe, but it also would have meant a lot of questions and Fury going around trying to be his ‘Disapproving Dad’ self at everyone. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to avoid that as much as possible.”

The mage raised a brow at him, his head tilting slightly. “And yet what you have done — assuming Fury accepts your lie as truth — is lessen that laughable routine for everyone _except_ yourself. In fact, you’ve made it so that all of Fury’s focus will be on you much more than if you had just let the situation play out on its own.”

“Yeah, well…” If he’d been standing, Tony would have probably shuffled his feet self-consciously under Loki’s intent green stare. Flying high above the ground, that was harder to pull off. His foiled fidgeting aside, he was made pointedly aware that they were still flying high, with Loki wrapped firmly around him. It made him inescapably aware of just how close they still were. Even if he couldn’t feel Loki’s grip or his body heat, they were close enough for him to see the pulse at Loki’s throat, to make out the striations of green and brown in his irises, to feel his breath on his face and neck when he spoke. Had they ever been this close before? He didn’t think so. Or if they had, it had only ever been very briefly, nothing like the long, maintained proximity they had now. It wasn’t a natural sort of position friends found themselves in, normally…

Didn’t mean it wasn’t nice… if a little intense.

“Why are you shielding me, Armor Man?” For some reason Loki’s voice had dropped slightly in register, the lower tone going straight through Tony’s suit and turning his gut to water.

He tried to shrug again, which only made him _more_ aware that he was _holding_ Loki. He knew how heavy he was — how heavy all of the Asgardians were relative to humans — but the suit made it so not only could he lift the mage, but made it feel easy. Simple. Right.

It was so easy to pick him up and protect him… so why shouldn’t he?

“Fury will give me less shit for turning the campus into a petting zoo,” he said, his tone matching Loki’s without his intending it to. He cleared his throat.

“Not by much,” Loki pointed out. His eyes moved, tracing over Tony’s face, lingering at the strangest places — his forehead, his jaw… He wondered what the mage was looking for.

“I’m aware of what Director Fury thinks of you, of how he treats you, despite all that you do,” he went on, his eyes still searching, searching. “Stepping in on my behalf is not likely to raise your stock with him. In fact it may lower you considerably. You’re putting yourself in a poor position for my sake. Why?”

It was such a straightforward question, and the answer seemed so obvious to Tony — it was amazing it was even being asked. He opened his mouth to give said oh-so-obvious answer… and had to close it again. He was at a loss for the words which ought to have been stumbling over themselves to be spoken, they were so self-evident.

But how was he meant to explain that it would have been more effort _not_ to help Loki? That it was just automatic, a default setting, to want to go to Loki’s aid whenever he saw it was needed? It’s not like he went through and weighed all the pros and cons of helping him out, it was just— a _thing_. It’s what he _did_. They were friends, after all, weren’t they? That’s just how it worked with friends; you _helped_ each other, even if it meant you’d be put out a little in the process. There was nothing strange in that.

Yet when he went to say as much, the words died in his throat. It wasn’t that what he wanted to say was wrong… it just felt _lacking_ in some way.

Maybe there _was_ more to it. The way that Tony seemed to be the only one who really consistently had this instinct with Loki really pissed him off, and only reinforced the impulse to come to Loki’s assistance when it was needed. So… friendship _and_ stubbornness? A sort of ‘fuck you’ to the assholes who would and did leave Loki to his own devices so often? That seemed closer, but…

He thought about what Loki said. That there wouldn’t be much difference in how Fury handled the situation whether he believed that it was either Tony or Loki who was responsible for it. That could be looked at as even-handedness, and in a way it was. But it was even-handedness as a byproduct of thinking of all of them as villains _in potentia_. Loki was in an only slightly worse position due to his history and a tendency to play up his willingness to ‘go evil’ — even if he wasn’t particularly evil on a day to day basis.

In the eyes of Fury, the Academy and SHIELD, Tony wasn’t much better than Loki — and Loki wasn’t much worse than Tony.

 _That_ pissed him off, too. Not because he was seen as not much better than a ‘proven villain,’ but because of what it said of how they thought of _Loki_. He remembered how everyone reacted as they learned, one by one, that Loki was officially a part of the school, a part of the ‘good guy team.’ It usually caused a measure of shock and disbelief, but then eventually a grudging acknowledgement that if he was a part of the Academy, then he couldn’t be _that_ bad. That he must have changed, have proven himself somehow to gain such approval. When really, it was just that the Academy and all those involved simply saw him as another ‘ _in potentia_.’ He might go rogue, but at the same time he was too useful to their various causes to _not_ make an effort to have him working on their side.

Same as Tony.

He shook his head a little. The bedrock deep need to protect Loki was too much to try and explain. at least for now. Maybe later, when he wasn’t feeling out all the details himself. So he settled on, “You haven’t given me any good reason _not_ to help you out yet.”

“And the Enchantress has, in comparison?” Loki looked, if possible, even more skeptical than before.

Tony rolled his eyes. “I think that goes without saying.”

Loki frowned. “Does it?”

“ _Doesn’t_ it?” Tony countered. Finally gathering himself enough to think of something other than the Asgardian in his arms, Tony began their gentle descent to the ground. It was getting a little awkward to continue holding Loki so close when there was no real _reason_ to. “Besides,” he said as he picked out the best place to touch down, “I rather enjoy coming to your rescue.”

“You do seem to be making something of a habit of it.”

They came back to earth slowly, the repulsors kicking up a small dust cloud. As they descended, Loki busied himself with disentangling his limbs from where he’d wrapped around Tony. He hadn’t realized just how much the mage had been clinging to him, apparently wrapping and hooking his legs round Tony’s as a way of stabilizing himself. A bit like a monkey. Loki waited until they were fully on the ground and Tony had cut out all of the systems before he unwound his arms from around Tony’s neck and took a slow step away from his rescuer.

Tony watched him, expecting him to make some sort of diva-ish comment about not having _needed_ his help at all before flouncing off to whatever sort of trouble he intended to get up to next. What he got instead was a Loki who stepped away from him a pace before frowning in thought, still studying him. All things considered, it was an unnerving expression.

“What’s up, Gorgeous?”

Loki blinked, coming back to himself a little bit. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Since you _do_ seem to be making a habit of rescues, and since you _have_ helped me to a degree, and Amora won’t take kindly to you when word gets back of what ‘you’ did…” The smile widened slightly. “I feel as though you’ve earned yourself a small reward, don’t you?”

Tony felt himself flushing, his overactive imagination deciding to come in at that precise moment to highjack what Loki said and go joyriding. He wasn’t a prude by any stretch of _anyone’s_ imagination, but hell’s bells, that was coming out of nowhere, wasn’t it…?

Loki, while Tony’s brain was trying to roast itself, was digging in one of his coat pockets. Once he found what he wanted, he held it up for Tony to see.

It was a pendant, silver and disc shaped, with a confusion of markings etched into its surface. Tony thought he could recognize a couple, but they were so tangled with each other that there was no way for him to interpret what they might actually mean. The pendant itself hung from a braided cord gripped in Loki’s fingers.

It slowly occurred to his amok mind that _this_ was what Loki had meant by ‘reward,’ not… anything else. His heart slowed back to something closer to normal.

“A necklace? You’re giving me pretty shinies, now?” He reached for the hanging pendant, bringing it a little closer in order to examine the design. It still made no sense, but Tony thought he could pick out a general, spiraling pattern to the symbols, and was able to see that there was a secondary set of marks, done much lighter than the first so they seemed to be hovering behind the bolder set.

“It’s beautiful,” he said simply, mildly hypnotized by the patterns. “What does it mean?”

Loki made a noise, much like a man who had been caught by surprise, which made Tony look up. His expression was smooth, however, simply watching Tony for his reaction. Maybe he’d imagined it.

“The marks are a complex runic spell,” he said slowly. He licked his lips, glancing down at the pendant in Tony’s gauntleted hand. “One of my own design, in fact. Its effect is one of a… a prism, of sorts. Meant to catch incoming Asgardian magic and scatter it to useless pieces.”

Tony stared at it, mind going blank for a second. “Wow. That’s… Wait, does that mean you made this _yourself?”_

The smug smile on Loki’s face was more than enough to answer that question, but it didn’t stop him from doing it verbally as well. “Every bit of it, from conception to fabrication. There’s not another one of these in all the Realms. And it should prove effective in counteracting any of the Enchantress’s charms.”

Oh. Really, now?

“That right?” He stroked a thumb over the surface of the pendant, wishing he could feel it, but the gauntlet got in the way. “So if you were holding this, why were you able to cast an illusion over us?”

If anything, the smile got even more smug. “The runic script is very specific. It will only work on Asgardian magic wielded _against_ the one holding it. Magic used in proximity or by the holder of the pendant itself will not be affected at all.”

“Very specific,” Tony agreed. “So. This will make it so any retaliatory magic Amora decides to aim my way…”

“Will miss. Or rather, will shatter before it ever has a chance to land properly.”

“So she’ll need to find a non-magical way to achieve her goals?”

“If she can manage such a feat.”

Tony still had the pendant in his hand, but hadn’t actually taken it out of Loki’s yet. He lifted his gaze, making direct eye contact again, making certain Loki was catching everything he said. “You know if I wear this, then _you_ won’t be able to cast magic on me, either.”

Loki met his eye steadily, one brow quirking up and giving his smile a downright coy look. “I’m certain that if there is ever anything I want from you, Armor Man, I will be able to convince you _without_ the aid of magic.”

Tony flashed his teeth in a grin, and at last took the pendant — the magic prism — out of Loki’s hand, accepting it. “It’s not coffee, but it’ll do, I suppose.”

He was rewarded not just with a one of a kind magic nullifier, but with a heartfelt eye roll as well. With his prank done, his alibi established and gift given, the mage slung his scepter over one shoulder. “Until next time, Stark.”

And he disappeared.

Tony stared at the spot where Loki had been, then shook his head with a smile. There was no figuring Loki out some days, though he was pretty easy to read on most of them.

He held his new pendant, his heartbeat picking up just a little to see it cradled in the palm of his gauntlet. Silver glinted back up at him, stark against the red. His mind was already racing ahead to all the tests he might run on the thing, on how he might apply the principle if he ever figured it out — probably even odds on that, he was _giving_ himself even odds for now. His mind also raced along tracks where he had no control whatsoever. Tracks such as ‘what did this mean,’ and ‘would Loki _really_ not be able to magic him?’

It was certainly going to give him an even more crowded ‘personal project’ list, but it would be worth it. Never mind that it would take a little longer to get around to that list, what with the pets he was going to have to figure out how to gather and return to their proper homes.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later that Tony realized that he hadn’t asked Loki what ‘project’ it was he and Amora had been fighting over.

 _Ah well_ , he thought. _I’ll ask him the next time I see him._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> 
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	4. Chapter 4

“Fuck!”

Tony had to pull out of his dive much sooner than he had been anticipating, the targets of his charge having all turned on him at once and revealing a lot more armament than a quick strafing run could contend with. He rolled to the side in midair, the concussive waves of the blasts meant for him sending him so off course that he nearly crashed into a coffee stand.

Not that he didn’t appreciate the thought of caffeine, but time and place.

He righted himself before he could crash through any of the campus buildings, and then put some distance between himself and the… well, frankly it looked a little bit like an army. Or part of one, at least. According to Steve, the size of the group — a dozen — made it a squad. And there were more of them that had infiltrated the school grounds. More squads of what looked very much like soldiers walking through the campus as though they owned it and refusing to answer any questions. They refused to say anything, in fact. They were silent as they made their way through, searching for… something.

And they were all wearing gear which looked very, _very_ Asgardian.

“Hey, guys. My little surprise attack was no good. They’ve either got rearview mirrors on those helmets or precognition.”

There was a low curse from Tony’s earpiece, too short and quiet for Tony to tell who it was that had spoken.

“Have we figured out where they’re coming _from?”_ Sam’s voice cut through, and from the tone of his voice he wasn’t having much more luck than Tony was at making a dent in their formations. “Because I would like to have some strong words for whoever sent them here.”

“Are you asleep, Falcon? They came from the Bifrost.” Trust Natasha to be unsympathetically honest.

Thor’s voice came through as little more than a growl, punctuated with the sounds of his hammer striking metal. “These intruders are nothing at all to do with Asgard. I assure you of _that.”_

The comm crackled in Tony’s ear at the same time lightning streaked through the sky. Obviously Thor was a little miffed at the damage the intruders were doing to his people’s reputation. The static was still clearing when Clint’s voice came through the line. “… how they managed to use the Bifrost to get in, then? It’s not like it’s a bus you can just hop aboard to get to your nearest Hero Market.”

“No. Way.” Tony fired over the heads of the soldiers, just to see if they would react at all. They did, and he was forced to duck quickly to avoid the very _not_ warning shot which was fired back. “I’m not getting up that early in the morning for health food nuts.”

“Don’t fib, Tony, we all know you’re on the market for everyone no matter the time.”

“Shut it, Hawkguy.”

“Guys, _focus_.” Steve actually sounded peeved. He must have been having trouble of his own.

“These are _not_ Asgardians,” Amora put in, sounding even more peeved than Steve.

“Agreed,” Loki’s voice came through, and Tony glanced around for him. When all of this had begun, he’d still been able to see Loki, but now… “These are imposters. Well supplied imposters, but nonetheless.”

“And the Bifrost thing?”

“Easily explained. It may not be a _bus_ , but it _is_ technology, and technology can be taken advantage of, bent to another’s purpose. Whoever these people are, they have a deep understanding of our machinery.”

“Are you trying to suggest that the Bifrost got _hacked?_ ”

“Your terminology needs an update, Steve. Remind me to have you sit through some movies more recent than _Robocop_.”

“It’s not such a strange concept,” Loki said, his voice slightly strained. Tony scanned the ground harder, looking for any telltale flash of magical green or reflected gold… “In a way Bird Boy wasn’t so very far off.”

Tony had to lay off his searching as another shot from the soldiers forced him to dodge again. He fired back with repulsor blasts. It was more or less _absorbed_ by the black shields they carried. Tony glared, and added those shields to his shopping list. If even one of them hit the ground he was taking it. He wanted to know _exactly_ what it was made out of.

It was becoming more and more obvious, though, that they were making no headway in turning the soldiers back, not while being spread as thin as they were. If they wanted to be effective, they were going to have to team up and hit them all at once. The only trouble was that there were enough soldiers that they could be in _several_ large groups, all scattered round the Academy, effectively dividing and overwhelming the Academy goers at the same time.

What they could really use at this point would have been someone really OP. Like say… a dinosaur, or a Red Hulk…

Too bad they were both out on missions.

“So the Bifrost _is_ a bus?”

“Busfrost,” Tony put in, dodging another blast. They hadn’t stopped in their march — surely it _was_ a search of some kind? — but they were definitely paying him more attention now as they made their way through campus.

“Great, now I’m going to have the Magic School Bus theme running through my head for the rest of the day.”

_“Focus.”_

“Alright, fine,” Natasha snapped. “Not Asgardians, but they hijacked the Bifrost to get here and seem determined that _we_ _think_ that they’re Asgardians. So who _are_ they?”

Another beam of light and heat had Tony taking cover behind a building. He hoped it was sturdy enough to withstand the beams… and that there wasn’t anything explosive inside. “Yeah, maybe we can ask them that over drinks and a light lunch _after we’ve stopped them?_ Do we have any ideas on that front, yet?” There was a bang and a rumble, and the building between him and the invaders shook. “Soon would be good.”

“I’ve made some progress,” Loki responded. “They’re well armored, but their weapons are fragile. They’re easily destroyed if you can _oof—_ “

Loki suddenly cut off, making Tony abandon his attempts at trying to get a clear look at ‘his’ squad. “Lokes? Hey, Lokes, what happened?”

“Loki, respond.” When a whole second went by with no reply to Steve’s instruction, he gave a low growl. “Anyone in Loki’s vicinity, find him and provide support.”

“Already en route, Cap.”

And he was. Even before Steve had finished instructing Loki to ‘respond,’ Tony had ducked out from cover, dodging fire from the imposter Asgardians, and begun searching for the mage in earnest. They’d started out this whole fiasco side by side. The call to arms had gone out as they had been enjoying a friendly argument about which of the students was the most paranoid — his bet was on Natasha, while Loki had been making a good case for Bobbi being the worst. They’d been standing right next to one another, hotdogs in hand when this had started. He couldn’t have gone _that_ far.

“J, fire up the sorcery scanners.”

That was perhaps the one productive thing which had come from studying the pendant Loki had given him — it had given him some good parameters for what sort of energy signals to search for in order to track magic. It wasn’t reverse engineering which would lead to his understanding of magic as a whole, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing at all.

And it worked. A corner of Tony’s HUD lit up with a bright green silhouette. Good, that meant Loki was close. After a certain distance, the HUD would register magic as a simple dot. A silhouette would only pop up if he was within one hundred yards. Which Loki appeared to be, behind Pym’s labs.

Tony sped over the top of the building and took in the scene without stopping, going straight down into a dive as soon as he cleared the roof.

Loki was surrounded, pinned down and on one knee against the side of the labs with what looked like an entire troop of the soldiers around him.

Loki’s scepter was _not_ in his hand, it was on the ground, too far away for an easy grab.

The soldiers weren’t carrying any weapons, either - Loki shattered them all? Instead they had their hands raised at Loki, empty palms leveled on him. It was a stance which was all too familiar and which would only mean one thing—

Tony landed right in front of Loki. He intended to get a shot off, hopefully surprise the soldiers in an unguarded moment and actually land a hit himself. But he arrived the same moment they, as one, let loose with the magical attack their poses had telegraphed.

Green and blue crashed over him in waves from every side. There was no time to retaliate, no time to dodge back out of the way, and even if there had been, _Loki—_

Tony braced himself as best he could, throwing up his arms and just hoping that he was providing enough cover for Loki, that his armor would withstand the onslaught of more than half a dozen magical blasts—

He blinked.

Nothing happened.

He risked a glance past his shielding arms. The warriors were still blasting away with their magic, but he could see the looks on their faces even through the bright light, and they looked confused. Tony couldn’t really blame them. He’d been slammed with magical attacks before — by Loki, during sparring. Even when he was braced for it they had a tendency to send him flying backwards if Loki put any real force behind them. Were these guys just shit at magic…?

Eventually the warriors around them ran out of juice, and the onslaught of green and blue sputtered to a stop. They were staring at Tony, a mix of bewilderment and possibly alarm spreading across their faces, the last clinging remnants of magic crawling over Tony’s armor.

Loki’s scepter leapt to his hand. Almost at the same instant, he and Tony both unleashed attacks on the warriors. With no shields and their own resources tapped, they fell amazingly easily — the first real victory Tony could count for the day so far.

The last warrior fell with a particularly vicious swipe to the temple from the back of end of Loki’s scepter. Tony winced on his behalf, but didn’t feel all that bad for him as he thudded to the pavement.

“You okay, Lokes? They had you down, did you take a hit?”

Rather than answer directly, Loki looked at him, scanning him from head to foot. “I feel like I have more right to ask _you_ that, Stark.”

“Aww, you worried about me, now?” Tony chuckled, hoping the mask was working to cover up just how relieved he was that Loki appeared to be just fine. No blood, no bruising, no favoring of any limbs, and the way he’d moved in taking out the warriors certainly hadn’t hinted at any major injuries. “You should be careful. Don’t want to ruin your reputation as a badass.”

Loki looked as though he were about to argue — about what, Tony had no idea — but Steve cut through on them both. “Tony, Loki, report. What’s going on over there?”

“Nothin’ much, Cap. Found Loki, we’re both hunky-dory. Took down a whole squad of those guys on our own.” He gave Loki a grin, before realizing that with the mask he wouldn’t be able to see the expression at all. “I think maybe we stumbled on a strategy for taking all these guys out.” He quickly laid out the basics of what he and Loki had done — take out the weapons, avoid the magic until they were tapped out, and then go in hard. It wouldn’t work every time, but it was better than what they had before. Once done with that, he made sure to flip up the faceplate so Loki could see the conspiratorial smirk he had on his face.

“So, Gorgeous, you feel like teaming up for a bit to take down our rather rude guests? I’d like to make sure you don’t get cornered and kaboshed.”

The mage snorted, twirling his magic stick negligently in one hand. “Once again, I must say that I believe _I_ have more right to say that than you do, Armor Man. At least _I_ am not diving into the center of magical maelstroms like a fool.”

“Hey, that worked!”

“Entirely beside the point. In any case,” he went on, finally returning Tony’s smirk, “I believe I am up for joining forces. Anything to keep you out of trouble.”

Tony snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

It wasn’t a 100% effective strategy. There were plenty of times where the two of them had to improvise, but they did make significant headway. Eventually they met up with more students, and really began to turn the tide. It might not have been foolproof, but the basic idea of ‘weapon go boom, tire them out, bad guy go clonk’ was effective enough. It became even more effective when Tony and some others picked up the energy absorbing shields. They were equally effective against the invaders’ weapons and their magic.

“Right,” Cap said as they stood round their unconscious captives, guarding them as they waited for the long overdue backup to gather them up and haul them off to wherever it was naughty invaders got taken to. “So now we have them, and we have a little time, does anyone have any ideas where these guys came from?”

“Not Asgard.” Thor’s rejoinder was just as firm and emphatic in person as it had been over the comm. In person, however, it was easier to see how the grip on his hammer tightened, his knuckles going white under the pressure.

Loki didn’t say anything to draw Tony’s attention, but he looked in his direction anyway. It might have been Thor’s behavior, combined with Loki just knowing more about this sort of thing in general which got Tony to glance his way. The mage was looking down on the invaders with a look which told Tony that he was less certain then Thor as to their origins — or non-origins. He frowned, tilting his head, and caught Tony’s eye.

Rather than call attention to the Prince over what looked like a very different opinion, Tony raised his brows at him, and motioned to the fallen warriors with an almost infinitesimal jerk of his head. Loki’s eyes widened, and then narrowed in either suspicion or consideration. He wasn’t going to push right away, but it certainly _looked_ as though Loki knew more than he was saying…

“Not _from_ Asgard, perhaps, but known _to_ and _knowing_ Asgard.”

Tony stared. He’d been positive Loki would decide to keep his mouth shut.

Those who were gathered near — Steve, Thor, Janet and Amora — all turned to stare at him with various levels of surprise, annoyance and suppression.

“What do you mean by that?” Steve was doing his best to sound neutral, Tony could tell. He could tell because he was doing that thing where he was keeping his body language very open. He kept his arms down, palms open, shoulders pulled back… Everything to say that he was _listening,_ but not judging.

“Surely that much is obvious,” Loki sneered. He motioned at their pile of captives. “Every detail points to that conclusion. Their dress, their method of arrival, their formation… even these.” Loki hefted one of the shields.

Looking at the things up close and without the distraction of being about-to-be blasted out of the sky, they were mildly disturbing. Absolutely black, they seemed to draw in everything around them, including light and sound. Whatever it was they were made of, or whatever enchantments were cast on them, it effectively turned the shields into portable black holes, where anything which came into contact with them disappeared. Tony held his own rather gingerly, under the impression that if his grip strayed from the straps at the back, he would lose his hand to the absorbing darkness at the front.

Steve eyed the shield in Loki’s hand, face still blank. “Is that an Asgardian shield?”

“It is not,” Thor was quick to put in, the grip on his hammer tighter than ever. Even Amora was giving him an odd look, now, brows raised and lips pursed.

There was no way Loki could have failed to notice as well, but he went on regardless, apparently ignoring his brother’s consternation. “No, it is not of Asgardian design or make. This is a shield from Svartalfheim, and is one of their more ingenious creations. A shield which neutralizes all manner and type of attack. It’s not the sort of thing which Asgard keeps very much to hand.”

Tony listened to Loki, but he was watching Thor. The guy was so tense, it was something of a miracle Mjölnir's handle hadn’t snapped yet. And yet, he only seemed to stiffen further when Loki continued with, “However. The magic they utilized was without doubt of Asgardian discipline.”

The quality of the air around them abruptly became more charged than before. Steve transferred his attention to Amora. “Is that right? These guys were using Asgardian magic?”

Amora, for once, looked a little dismayed at the attention being paid her, but recovered quickly. She gave a careless shrug, her expression shifting to bored and disdainful. “If one _had_ to ascribe a discipline to these louts, I _suppose_ it was Asgardian. Though it stretches the definition of ‘discipline’ to its breaking point. The way they were using their power, it might as well have been a club.”

“But that says a lot for them _not_ being Asgardians, doesn’t it?” Janet stepped forward, putting a hand on Thor’s back in a clear bid to settle him down. “If they _were_ from Asgard, then they should be better at Asgardian magic. If they’re bad at it, then they can’t have practiced it much. Right?”

Loki and Amora exchanged a look. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t need to for Tony to understand what they were communicating. A lack of skill, especially with something like magic, didn't necessarily disqualify their intruders as Asgardians. A lack of proficiency was not proof.

And if they _were_ Asgardians, what did it mean that they were invading the school?

“Asgardian magic, huh?” Tony’s mouth started running before he could stop it, attempting to break the tension around them before it strained past the point of bearing. “I thought it looked familiar. Though you’re right, it kinda looked like they were swinging it around like sledgehammers.”

Loki gave him a look. “And yet you were quite willing to throw yourself in front of those sledgehammers.”

“Hey, it worked!”

“You did _what?_ ” Amora looked at him with an expression of horror — or at least a good approximation of horror. There was something just a little off about it, an impression which was not improved in the least by her stepping closer, features rearranging themselves into solicitous concern. “You poor, foolish boy, why would you ever _do_ such a thing?”

Tony did his best to ignore Janet miming gagging behind Amora’s back, and did his best to let none of his own feelings show through, either. “Well, there weren’t many options, and Loki was in a bind.”

Something flickered over her face, there and gone in an instant. “So heroic, as always. But really, darling, you ought to know that _Loki_ can take care of himself. He often does, he’s used to it.” She stepped closer still, apparently oblivious to the reactions _that_ little dig earned her from everyone who heard it, until she was cradling Tony’s face in her hands, thumbs tracing over his cheeks. “You’re _human_ , Tony. A man superior to others, but still a man. You shouldn’t risk yourself for… those who need no rescuing.”

He couldn’t be sure what his expression was, exactly, but he _knew_ it wasn’t anything nice enough to justify the softly cajoling one on Amora’s. There was no way she should seriously be looking at him like that, like they were sweethearts sharing a private moment. It was a little creepy, really. He almost wished he’d kept his faceplate down.

Her expression didn’t change when he laid a gauntleted hand over hers, nor when he gently — but firmly — removed her hands from his face. It was only when he spoke that her face froze.

“Thanks for the concern, Amora, but I’ve gotten pretty good about looking after myself. I often do, I’m used to it.”

Amora’s face flushed with heat, her eyes lighting up with indignant fire. Behind her Tony saw Thor’s eyes widen and Janet’s jaw drop. He ignored them both and gave Amora a sweet smile, almost hoping that it looked as strained as it felt. “Besides, it’s not like there was much time to consider things, and I always tend to leap before I look when it comes to people I care about.”

The look on Amora’s face really was priceless. It was almost a shame when the cleanup crew arrived for their crop of captives, immediately distracting them all.

Though Tony was soon distracted from the distraction by Loki taking a hold of one of his arms and hauling him away as soon as all eyes were off of them. He didn’t say anything — he didn’t want much to do with the cleanup crew and answering their questions, either — until they were a good distance away and out of earshot.

“You know, there are easier ways of getting me all to yourself than by dragging me into the bushes.”

Loki snorted, releasing his arm. “I would hardly call the middle of campus ‘the bushes,’ but you do tend to give everything you see a ridiculous nickname.”

“Again, that’s a little rich coming from you.” He looked back over his shoulder, back the way they’d come from. He felt a little bad abandoning everyone else to the initial round of questions, but not too much. Debriefings were more Steve’s cup of tea, and it wasn’t like Tony and Loki were going to be able to duck them _forever_. It was just putting off the inevitable for a bit. “So is this just a case of playing hooky from the rest of the class,” he asked, turning back to Loki. “Or did you want something specific?”

Loki blinked at him, and Tony had a brief flash of déjà vu when a play of emotions flashed across Loki’s face, there and gone again before he could interpret a single one. Rather than address a single one of them, though, Loki nodded towards the shield Tony still held. “I rather presumed that you would have some interest in studying that. You had a gleam in your eye when looking at it which would indicate as much.”

He chuckled, running a hand — carefully — along the edge of his shield. “Am I that easy to read?”

“Occasionally, though not so often as some others.”

Tony stopped and looked up, startled by how sincere that statement sounded. Even Loki looked surprised by the words that had come out of his mouth. Rather than address it, though, he motioned to the shield in Tony’s hand again. “If you’re set on keeping your prize, then I would suggest you conceal it as quickly as possible. It’s doubtful that our minders will allow you to keep an object that powerful to yourself.”

“What, you don’t think they would trust me to handle a space shield that eats energy?”

Loki raised a brow.

“Okay, fair enough. I’m pretty sure there’s some places at the Tower that Fury doesn’t know about yet. We’ll go with that.”

In the interest of stealth, Tony opted to stay on the ground rather than fly back to the Tower. Those who’d just arrived with Steve and the rest might not spot him immediately, but there were other groups around, and there were always eyes on the sky around campus. There were eyes everywhere, to be honest, but it was probably best not to think about that too much. If he did, then he’d swiftly get on the same level of paranoia as Tasha and Bobbi, and that was a level of stress he wasn’t prepared to suffer through.

He was a little startled when Loki followed him to the Tower, though. He grinned and nodded to the shield the mage had also managed to keep hold of. “And what’s _your_ excuse for holding on to one? From the sound of things you know plenty about them already. Did you just want to keep it as a decoration?”

“Perhaps,” he replied with a smirk. “As I indicated earlier, these sorts of shields and enchantments of the Svartalfar are somewhat rare. One would have to be a fool to allow one to slip their fingers.”

“Well, then, I’ll be glad to not count myself a fool — at least in this instance,” he added, cutting off a comment he was certain was coming, a certainty which was more or less confirmed by Loki’s smirk. “Where are you planning on hiding yours, then? Don’t you have a magic bag of holding or something you could stash it in?”

“Hmm. I would like you to consider for a moment the implications and wisdom of storing an object which ‘eats energy’ in a dimensional pocket, which by its very nature is a construct of mismatched energy potentials, and only remains in existence because the laws of physics haven’t noticed yet.”

“Ah. Yeah, that could be a problem. So did you want to stash yours with mine, then?”

“No. If your hiding place is discovered, then both would be lost at the same time. And I would prefer unfettered access to my own things.”

Tony snorted. “You know I’d _give_ you access, right? Plus I doubt you’d have much trouble getting in if you really wanted to.”

Loki didn’t reply to that, which left Tony to wonder in silence. If Loki didn’t intend to conceal his pilfered shield where Tony intended to hide his, then why was he coming with Tony at all? If he were serious about keeping hold of it, then he _ought_ to be making with the hiding as quickly as he could. It wasn’t like Fury and Hill were going to wait around once they realized that the two of them had gone missing. They’d be hunted up pretty quickly, and if the shields weren’t out of sight by then, they were as good as gone. Loki was right about that, Tony knew. There was no way that either of them were going to be _allowed_ to keep such powerful items for themselves, bereft of supervision. Loki for obvious reasons and Tony for… still obvious, and only slightly different reasons.

Besides the shields, though, Tony thought that there would have been plenty of _other_ things for Loki to concentrate on. They had just been invaded by a possible rogue faction of heavily armed and armored Asgardians. Surely that was due a bit of investigation, given just how upset Thor had been at the merest suggestion that their attackers had come from Asgard, _despite_ how obviously that seemed to be the case. Tony could hardly blame him. Odin was meant to be super buddy-buddy with Fury and the rest of the bigwigs, after all. If there were Asgardians who were breaking ranks to attack an ally, it was going to spell some major trouble for that partnership. And if there was even a _hint_ that the attack was endorsed by the Allfather…

It wasn’t something which would have just slipped Loki’s notice. He knew it wouldn’t. The look on his face when they’d all been discussing the invaders said that he saw and understood all of that — and probably could see a good deal more than Tony could. Loki was clever, and a natural schemer, there was no way he was just letting all of this just slide by without _some_ sort of response…

And yet he kept walking with Tony, calm as could be, for no other visible reason than he simply _wanted_ to.

There were plenty of hiding places to choose from in the Tower where the shield could be stored. In the end Tony chose one of high — but not the highest — difficulty in finding and security coverage. If the shield still went missing from there it would give him a rough idea of what level of sneak he was dealing with, and possibly throw whoever it was off _their_ game if they thought that that was the best that Tony could do, _and okay fine_ , maybe he was getting a _touch_ paranoid. It was a little hard _not_ to be, but he still refused to get as bad as some of the conspiracy theorists the Academy could boast… But it never hurt to be careful, did it?

He took the opportunity to strip out of his armor, and with a final couple of instructions to JARVIS, he went back to his living room where he’d left Loki, looking around the furnishings with mild interest.

“Right, alien tech successfully secreted! Now w- …Alright, where did _your_ shield go?”

Loki looked up from where he was perusing Tony’s book shelves, head tilted to read the spines. In one hand he held his scepter, and the other was conspicuously empty. He gave Tony a smirk. “ _That_ would be telling, wouldn’t you say?”

“Maybe,” he replied, looking around the room. Had he just missed it when Loki put it down? He was certain he had been holding the thing when coming _in_ to the Tower… “I thought you said that dimensional pocket thing was a bad idea? Or did you teleport it somewhere?”

“No,” he said, twirling the scepter carelessly. “Any attempt to perform magic _on_ the shield would have much the same result as when trying to hit it _with_ magic. Completely ineffective. It is perhaps one of the most irritating components when working with such objects.”

“Huh. Noted.” He watched the scepter as it twirled for a minute, waiting for any sort of continuation on where the shield had gone. After about a minute, when it was obvious Loki didn’t intend to say anything else about it, he shrugged. “Well, it’ll be interesting to see what I can learn from it later. See if I can replicate the material and its effects at all.”

“When it comes time to test any of your experiments, do call on me. I’d be happy to test your creations and see how they hold up.”

“Really?” Tony tilted his head at him. “Since when are you so willing to help out with ‘mere mortal endeavors’?”

“If it’s in the interests of science…” Loki said, still grinning a little.

“Oh, well. _Science_.” Tony waved a hand. “How could I forget, one of your greatest loves, _of course_ you would be in it for the _science_.”

Loki chuckled, and Tony couldn’t help but join in.

After a moment, Loki sobered a little, though that mischievous smile of his stayed quite firmly in place. “I will admit that I would much rather be the one to assist in any tests involving magic, rather than have you leaping out in front of it in the field.”

“What makes you think I would test anything like this in the field before testing it in the lab first?”

“Other than the fact that you are you?” Loki asked with a raised brow. “I have gotten to know you far too well to think otherwise at this point. But even had I not known that, would you truly try to convince me that you have tested the pendant before today?”

The pendant…?

“Oh!” Tony dug under the collar of his shirt, fingers tangling with an unfamiliar chain before coming back with the silver pendant Loki had given him. Even after having spent hours of staring at the thing, the layered patterns of runes still drew his eye, tugging at his attention. He’d gotten plenty of practice at shaking that off, though. “Almost forgot I was wearing this. So this would explain why Amora’s thing didn’t work.”

Loki stared at him, his smile fading and the silence stretching on rather significantly. Rather than his usual smile, Loki was taking on an expression Tony was much more used to seeing on Pepper’s face. “Please tell me this is one of your terrible jokes. _You forgot you were wearing it?_ ”

“Well… yes?” He shrugged at Loki’s incredulous stare. “I mean it _is_ a ‘set it and forget it’ system, right? And it’s not like I wear jewelry all that much, so it’s easy for me to forget that I’m wearing things like this.” He tapped the pendant idly, resisting the urge to hold it and examine the runes etched into it for the umpteenth time. “Glad to see that it worked — though I never had any real doubt about that. I gotta wonder at Amora’s timing, though, going for a seduction right in the middle of all of that was going on.”

Loki shook his head. “I believe it was her way of diverting focus away from the possibility that our people were invading the school…” He said it distractedly, offhandedly, like it didn’t matter. When Tony looked up, he found the mage was staring at him with what he would interpret as, if it had been on anyone else, mild horror. “ _You forgot_. That you were wearing. That pendant.”

“Well… yes?” Tony frowned. “It worked, though, so—“

“You forgot you had an item which would nullify Asgardian magic,” he went on, talking over Tony in the tone of one speaking to a particularly slow listener. “An item which you had not even properly _tested_ to know if it would work, even if you _had_ remembered you were wearing it. And you jumped in front of a dozen Asgardian _warrior_ _mages_.”

…ah.

“Right. I, uh. I didn’t think about that.”

Horror shifted into something like indignant anger, green eyes flashing as his brows drew close together, his head angling so the golden horns he wore became more prominent. “You absolute _idiot_. You leapt in front of not one, but _several_ men who were obviously about to unleash a magical attack with absolutely no guarantee of protection?”

“Sure looks like it.”

“ _Why?_ ”

It was a simple question. But it was loaded with so much subtext Tony could practically see all of the layers. ‘Why take that kind of risk?’ ‘Why put himself in that kind of danger?’ ‘Why was his first instinct ‘shield’ and not ‘attack’?’ ‘Why protect _him_ …?’

Tony had a moment of clarity. A little like those times when he’d spent hours upon hours down in his lab, working on a problem or an idea, and the pieces just refused to come together. And then he would look away for a moment, and it was as though everything shifted all on its own, presenting him with a complete picture, the way it all fitted together so obvious it strained his credibility as a genius prodigy.

The pendant and chain pooled into the palm of his hand neatly, the chain obscuring the swirling rune design enough that Tony felt very little of its draw as he stared down at it, thinking through what he ought to say.

Then again, he’d never been very good about planning out what he said, not even for meetings.

Just like down in his lab, the pieces all fell together, fitting together to form a perfect picture he’d only caught glimpses of before, but had never really _seen_.

He’d have to be a fool to let it escape now.

“Because thinking of what would happen if I got there in time was less important than imagining what would happen if I _didn’t_.”

When he glanced up, Loki’s expression had changed again, and now his face was almost completely blank. As though his words had struck all of the emotion out of him, Loki’s entire posture had slackened, the anger bleeding out of him, his scepter drooping until the tip of it was pointing to the ground. He was staring back at Tony as though he couldn’t understand what it was he had said to him... or he thought Tony was an idiot.

Tony pocketed the pendant, giving a half shrug. “I wasn’t lying when I told Amora that there wasn’t time to really _think_ , just _do_. And it’s instinctual to protect the people we care about, right?”

“Perhaps,” Loki said, voice distant. “There may be some truth in what you say, but I think you’ll find that my personal experiences are a little less cut and dried than your own.”

“You might be surprised, actually,” he said, chuckling to keep from grimacing. “But what I said still holds.” He took a few careful, casual steps forward, watching Loki closely for any sign that he might be getting spooked. He was definitely watching Tony, but giving no hint that he was averse to Tony approaching. “When it comes down to the people we care about, we tend to act before we think.” Step. Step. “And I certainly acted before I could think in this case.”

A shadow of a smile tugged at the corner of Loki’s mouth, not quite mocking, not quite honest. “You need more practice at your flirtations, Armor Man. They are beginning to lose their edge.”

“That right, Gorgeous?” Another couple of steps brought him close enough to reach him.

“Indeed.” He shifted his weight, but turned more towards Tony rather than away. “Though your theory posits an interesting possibility in its opposite. If one thinks overmuch of someone, does that indicate that they care for that person _less?_ ”

Tony smirked at him, closing the last of the distance between them slowly. “Have you been thinking about me a lot, Loki?”

“More than necessary, at least,” he said flippantly, but Tony was getting close enough to notice some little things. Like how Loki’s breathing had quickened, how the pupils of his eyes had widened as his gaze flicked over Tony’s face… how his voice was dropping, ever so slightly.

“Too little, too much, not enough…” They were so close now, in one another’s space, sharing air, Tony could practically feel Loki’s body heat. “I’m certainly not giving any thought to _this_.”

And he wasn’t. He knew he probably should, and he probably _would_ , later. But for now there was only Loki. Loki who wasn’t backing off or turning away, who seemed to be just as interested in Tony as Tony was in him… what was there to think about?

Leap, and _then_ look.

Except his leap was cut short. At the last moment, Loki put a hand to his chest and stopped him from closing the last few inches.

Tony opened his eyes, confused, and only grew more so when he saw the obvious heat in the mage’s eyes. He frowned, pushing against Loki’s hand a little, but Loki wouldn’t budge.

Loki blew out a breath, one which shuddered just a little, and shook his head. “I think in this case, Anthony, you really ought to give it some thought.”

With a final, soft stroke of Tony’s cheek, Loki faded out of sight, and out of his Tower, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

“Damn.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone!
> 
> You can find me on  
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> 
> If anyone wants to come say hi or chat about nerdy things, hmu! ♥


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! Thank you so much for reading everyone! I hope you enjoyed the fic and the art, and make sure to check out the other entries into the Iron Man Big Bang! :D
> 
> Special thanks in this chapter to [SalamanderInk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrysallydOnCarMINeWilloW/pseuds/SalamanderInk) for some help with the editing! ♥

All things considered, Tony was _really_ glad that he had his own Tower to retreat to, and wasn’t stuck at the Avengers or Maverick Dorms. There were a lot of reasons to be grateful for having an entire _building_ to himself. He didn’t have to sign one of those papers agreeing to a certain set of behaviors while in his own living space — though he wondered sometimes how well _any_ of them actually stuck to those things.

With his own Tower, he was always at least _reasonably_ assured of some privacy. There was plenty of room to sprawl and let his stuff sprawl as well. He had JARVIS and his bots. He could play his music as loud as he wanted, and have his breakfast in the hot tub if he really wanted to. He had all the comforts of home, since the Tower _was_ his home, with the advantage that he didn’t have to bring along any of the shit from his original home that he didn’t want to. He had all of the positives, and none of the negatives.

Tony rolled, misjudged where the edge of the couch was, and flopped straight onto the floor.

It was hard.

Yeah, this was totally fine. Nothing wrong at all with his life or his living situation or _anything_. All the fucked up shit back at the family home? Completely left all of that behind. It wasn’t like the voice of his father was forever jammed deep into his brain, or that the more he tried to dig it out, the further in it got jammed.

Nope.

Definitely not.

He just liked lying on the floor.

Tony groaned, and wondered what time it was. Then he wondered if he really cared or if his wondering about the time was just automatic. A general systems check which kicked on once in a while without any real input from his brain. Either way, he didn’t care enough to actually check, or to ask JARVIS. At this point he wasn’t even sure if it was morning or night. It probably didn’t matter.

How long had it been since he’d drunk anything, though? That was probably important.

Water.

He lifted his head, squinting around to see if any stray water bottles had also decided that the floor was prime real estate to roll around on.

There weren’t any in sight. Which would mean that he was going to have to actually _get up_ and find some.

How barbaric.

He didn’t get up right away. In fact he might have fallen asleep a little bit before he decided to actually heave himself off of the floor and stumble into the kitchen. The lights were all on low, and it was either night outside or JARVIS had decided to keep all the windows darkened. No way of knowing without asking, and Tony decided not to on principle. There was an odd comfort in not having any clue what time of day it was. Even knowing if the sun was up or down would shatter the illusion that he was completely free of such worldly considerations.

Kitchen. Fridge. Water bottle. The crack of a breaking seal. Drink. Try not to drown.

The water was good. He must have really needed it if water tasted _good_. Of course, it didn’t taste as good as it _could_ … but that was one thought he was doing his best to keep out of his head.

Water was good. Water was just fine with him, thank you so very much. He could and would be drinking it for the rest of his life, so any other drink vying for his attention could just fuck right off.

He drained the bottle, still standing in front of the open fridge. He wasn’t particularly hot, but the cool air felt nice.

It was as good an excuse as any for why he just stood there, unmoving in the cold slice of light in his kitchen.

When the temptation to just sink down and sit in the cold breeze became almost too much to resist, he decided it was time to move. If he was going to spend time sitting on the floor staring into nothing, he was going to do it where there was a carpet and some cushions, thanks.  He grabbed another water bottle, wondered about food, decided that it was too much effort, and shut the fridge.

Except that plopping down on the floor in the living room didn’t appeal. Neither did going back to the couch. He was sore enough from lying on the damned thing for hours that the idea of returning to it made him feel a little bit nauseous. So instead of standing in front of his fridge and staring at nothing in particular, he stood just inside his living room and stared at nothing in particular.

Even conscious, he wasn’t sure he was really awake.

Tony gave himself a violent shake. He hated it when he got like this, feeling like he was stuck in place, even his thoughts refusing to move. He needed to do _something_ , or he might spend days like this before his brain decided to finally kick over and function properly again.

He didn’t really feel like going out and socializing. As much as he loved company, now was not the right time for that. Sitting around and watching TV was barely better than staring blindly into space, and reading wouldn’t hold his interest nearly enough to keep his mind from wandering. Which left tinkering down in his workshop as the last real choice.

Tucking his water under his arm and grabbing the nearest tablet, Tony made his way downstairs.

—•—

Focusing on a single thing was a good coping mechanism. It took away all of the extraneous thoughts which circled and wheeled around like hungry buzzards, waiting to swoop in on him. Keeping himself on a single track and filling his mind with one project — with all the problems, solutions, formulae and running commentary associated with it — made it almost impossible for anything else to fit. It was like cranking up the volume on a stereo to drown out an obnoxious roommate. If all he could hear was the music, then the roommate might as well not exist.

It was more effective than trying to switch his brain off completely. With that method he’d been staring off into space and becoming fascinated by the cold air given off by a fridge. That strategy only worked for so long as he was able to focus on nothing at all, which was difficult. He’d never really been big on the whole meditation thing.

But then, being more awake and active came with its own dangers. With his brain actually ticking over, it made it so much easier for the intrusive thoughts to gain traction. He was already thinking — how easy would it be for his thoughts to be diverted into some other direction?

It was a case of either no thought at all, or _as_ _much_ thought as he could manage, all focused in one particular direction.

The shield seemed as good a direction as any.

The black, energy-eating shields which Loki insisted were an invention of the people of Svartalfheim — wherever _that_ was. He’d also insisted that Asgard didn’t keep the shields on hand, giving the impression that the warriors who invaded the campus a week ago couldn’t have been from Asgard. Going from what Thor was still shouting to whoever would listen, he believed that as well.

But Tony had learned to read between the lines with Loki, and there was a little too much wiggle room in the whole ‘Asgard doesn’t keep these to hand’ argument. For example, keeping a particular kind of weapon or armament ‘on hand’ wasn’t the same as having them at all. If Asgard _knew_ about the shields well enough to recognize them by sight, that suggested they either _did_ have some themselves, commissioned directly from Svartalfheim, or they had seen them used by someone else — either the Svartalfar themselves or others using their tech.

And if that other statement Loki had made were to be taken to heart, ‘One would have to be a fool to allow one to slip their fingers’… It made Tony think that any time the Asgardians came into contact with the shields, they _kept_ as many they could. They might not be something which the Asgardians had an easy _supply_ of, but Tony had a hard time thinking that Asgard didn’t have a stock of them somewhere. From what he’d heard, they hoarded like packrats.

Asgard might not have been the ones to _send_ the warriors who had invaded, but it was very possible that they had provided, willingly or not, the gear the invaders had been using. It was plausible, at least, and that would be enough to have the Asgardians worry about their alliances.

Which was… neither here nor there, so far as Tony was concerned. It wasn’t really his problem whether it looked like Asgard and Odin had sent an attack against the school for no discernible reason. It wasn’t his job to figure out if it was true, and it wouldn’t impact him _too_ directly… Both Thor and Loki, and even Amora all appeared to be as disturbed by the idea as anyone else, so he doubted that there was anything to _really_ worry about with them, at least. If Odin had gone off his rocker and decided that the Avengers Academy needed to be taken down, then Tony was reasonably certain that all three of them would go rogue and not follow any sort of lead of Odin’s.

Tony could most certainly depend on Loki in this case. He would go rogue for sure. And really, he was the one Tony actually cared about. Though it would suck for Janet if Thor decided that staying loyal to the Alldad was more important than protecting his classmates…

Thor had better not hurt Janet. He’d have a lot more problems than a turncoat dad if he did.

Tony doubted that Loki would be terribly hurt or surprised if Odin _did_ turn out to be an oath breaker. There were probably very few things which Loki wouldn’t put past his father.

It was one of those things which they had in common, wasn’t it?

Tony rubbed at his face. That wasn’t the track he wanted his thoughts going down. It wouldn’t do him any good. There was no point in thinking about home or Howard. It wouldn’t change anything, and would only drag his mood into the sewer, so why even bother? Best to ignore it.

Tony refocused on the shield. Someone on some other planet had come up with this tech, and he was determined that he could figure it out and replicate it, or something so close to it that it would essentially be the same. He was a genius, he’d figure it out. He had a sample in front of him, what was there to stop him? Even if he had to stay up for nights at a time, he _would_ figure it out.

No one could call him a slacker when it came to the things he was really passionate about…

—•—

“… Stark…?”

The voice sounded really far away… Tony wasn’t even sure he’d heard it, really… It might have just been his imagination. Or a scrap of nightmare still lurking around his head… he decided to ignore it.

**_That’s right, just ignore everything that matters…_ **

“Stark?”

The voice didn’t go away. That probably meant it was real. Probably. But it still might go away if he just ignored it a little harder.

**_…not like you have to work for anything…_ **

“Stark, say something, would you? Let me know that you’re alive?”

Oh, was that all the voice wanted? That was easy, especially if it meant that it would go away and leave him in peace.

“…mostly alive, thanks…”

**_… why do I even bother with you?_ **

The voice didn’t come back, so Tony assumed that his one dispirited response was enough to convince whoever it was that he was alive. Not dead enough to call a coroner yet, at least. Though the way he was feeling, a burial might actually be preferable.

**_Waste of talent._ **

Maybe if he tried really hard he could slip back into unconsciousness. Things hadn’t exactly been tame inside his head, but there was a small measure of comfort to be had in being unconscious.

If he were already unconscious, for example, he wouldn’t be going through cupboards to find anything to help _make_ him unconscious…

…

The next time Tony was pulled out of unconsciousness — either a few minutes or a few days later, he couldn’t tell — the first thing he became aware of was a smell. It was warm and sweet, familiar enough to get his attention and with a spicy undertone to really pull him back into the real world. If there was something out there which smelled that good, it might actually be worth waking up.

“Anthony.”

The name was a little odd, too. Who the hell called him _Anthony…?_ …There had been one person recently, hadn’t there? And it had made him sit up and take notice then, too.

“Come along, Anthony, I know you’ve been wanting more of this. It always tastes best warm, and it’d be a shame to let it go to waste now.”

**_Waste…_ **

Tony groaned. It was only through sheer will that he was able to drag his eyes open. Thankfully it wasn’t terribly bright, so he didn’t have the immediate sensation of his eyeballs melting out of his head. But his eyes _were_ dry, and what he could see of the world was turned on its side. The only thing he could make out clearly was the edge of his tablet laying close to his face. Everything else was still soft and out of focus.

He gave another groan, both on principle and to make sure the world at large was _really_ aware of how much he disapproved of being awake. Rubbing at his eyes made them sting more, but also brought a small measure of relief. At least it made them tear up, which was better than whatever they’d been doing before.

The first thing which swam back into focus was something he’d been half expecting — a steaming mug. The half-formed memories brought on by the smell clicked the rest of the way into place.

Coffee.

Not just any coffee, but wonderful, spicy coffee which had been left waiting for him one morning after giving Loki some help with an assignment.

It took entirely too much effort, but Tony raised his head off of the work table — had he laid down his head _before_ passing out? — and squinted at the man holding the mug.

Loki stared down at him, his expression mostly neutral, but with a slight wrinkle between his brows. It could have been either annoyance or concern. With Loki it was hard to tell.

“Aw, honey, you shouldn’t have,” Tony said — or tried to say. It came out more as a broken croak, and he had to turn his head away as he coughed. How long ago had he drained his water bottle?

When his coughing passed, Loki replied. “No, I probably shouldn’t have. _Someone_ was bound to come and check on you. I could have just left this to whoever decided that your absence had gone on long enough.”

“I see why they call you Silvertongue.” Tony tried to straighten up. Either fortunately or unfortunately, it worked. It was a good reminder of why it was he really shouldn’t fall asleep sprawled across his work tables. It sounded — and _felt_ — as though every joint in his spine cracked as sat up. Why could he never pass out in a comfortable position when his body decided it needed to sleep for eleven years?

Loki was still watching him, and held out the steaming mug once he was through stretching. Tony looked at him, and then the mug for a moment before taking it without a word.

It was just as amazing as the first cup he’d tried all those weeks ago — possibly even better. Whether that was an effect of how long it had been between samples, or having just woken from the dead in order to have this second cup, or if this cup really _was_ an improvement over the first, he had no idea. Nor did he really care. He had delicious coffee running through him and warming him up from the inside, and that was enough to keep him from completely regretting the fact that he’d woken up.

Whatever it was Loki put in his coffee, it was amazing. Somehow he felt more awake and yet relaxed than he had in… however long he’d been down in the workshop. If Loki ever decided to share his coffee secrets, he’d be a hero no question. Forget saving the world, just give humanity an effective stimulant that didn’t make them climb the walls and he would be lauded as a savior.

“Thanks, Lokes,” he sighed. When he opened his eyes again, he found that the mage was still staring at him, and that faint wrinkle between his brows had only deepened.

“There have been… concerns about you,” he said slowly, eyes scanning over Tony’s face. Tony rather dreaded what Loki must have been seeing, considering that he’d completely lost track of the last time he’d washed his face. Or shaved.

“Have there.”

Wonderful. People were concerned about him. Which meant they would want to know what was wrong. Which meant they were going to pry. Tony could practically see it already in Loki’s eyes, the questions floating in there, waiting to be asked.

He was doubly glad for the coffee, now. It would help to brace him for what was coming.

Loki cocked his head, not quite frowning at him. “It would have been difficult to _fail_ to notice your absence. Your presence is normally felt by everyone wherever you go, it can hardly be overlooked when it’s gone.” Long fingers tapped out a distracted staccato rhythm on Tony’s worktable. “The general thought was that you were involved in some project and had lost track of time again, only in this case for a particularly long stretch. Some of the flightier students have begun to think that you were sent on some secret mission and no longer on campus at all.”

Tony smiled a little into his cup, watching the colors inside swirl around one another. “Kamala?”

“How did you guess?” There was a smile in Loki’s voice.

“Intuition.” He took another sip of the coffee. Yeah, he was definitely going to have to con Loki into teaching him how to make it. “So are those the only theories floating around?”

“No, there are others, of course. But those are the most prevalent. The second one has only gained popularity, I think, because of how enthusiastic the Elastic Girl has been in her spreading of it. “

“Yeah, that sounds like her.”

Loki paused, and Tony braced himself.

“The Bug Woman has remained relatively neutral on the subject, apparently unconcerned over your absence. When I questioned her, she said that you were likely just in need of some ‘me time,’ but would give no reasons as to why.”

“That…” That _didn’t_ really sound like Janet. Not that she was a blabbermouth when it came to personal stuff. But for some reason Tony had assumed that she _would_ talk to Loki. Not out of malice, but because she and Loki were actually pretty tight. The two of them got along great, and hung out a lot. Not that _that_ would have been reason enough for Janet start sharing all of Tony’s personal hang ups… It was a little hard to pin down his own reasoning for why he thought, automatically, that Janet would be totally cool with spilling Tony’s secrets to Loki.

Maybe because she saw that Loki actually seemed to care about him. And that he wouldn’t use Tony’s secrets against him.

Tony remembered how close they had stood together the day the strangers invaded. He remembered the look in Loki’s eyes when he said that he jumped to the defense of those he cared about without thinking. The first coffee, the hanging out, the hundreds of little examples of… of _something_ being there which he hadn’t noticed at the time but which taken all together seemed so damned _obvious_ …

Janet would have noticed all of that as well, and way before Tony had. It was probably a miracle that she hadn’t clubbed him over the head with it weeks ago.

Though the way things were going just now, maybe it was better that she hadn’t. At least this way, he hadn’t said or done anything _too_ much. Nothing had really happened or come of the vague feelings he’d only just realized were there.

Better that nothing had really developed at all, than to have something which he would break.

He sighed, and stared into the coffee. There was only a quarter of the cup left. If he didn’t drink it soon, it would go cold. It wouldn’t be as good cold as it would be hot.

But it was better than nothing, wasn’t it?

“And what were your theories, Gorgeous?” He could still use that name. He’d been using it for ages. It didn’t mean anything. Saying it now wouldn’t mean anything, either. It was normal, routine. Nothing special.

Loki was still watching him curiously, and for the first time Tony noticed that he wasn’t wearing his usual set of golden horns. It was… odd. It made him look weirdly exposed. Not that the band and horns had really done much to cover his face, but they had apparently done a lot to alter its shape, making it seem much… heavier set. He looked younger without it. Perhaps even odder was that Loki’s scepter was also missing. Tony had been under the impression that the thing was permanently attached to his hand.

“I had some… possibilities in mind to explain your withdrawal. But I don’t think any of them were well developed enough to be considered complete _theories_.” Green eyes skated over his face, and Tony had to keep himself from turning away, to hold still under the scrutiny. “Most of them concerned your possible desire to remove yourself from certain _people,_ rather than the school as a whole.”

Tony gave a half shrug. He _was_ avoiding certain people; it was just that in this case ‘certain people’ boiled down to ‘everyone.’ When his mind started turning in on itself he didn’t really want to be around anyone, either to allow them to see what he was going through or to endure their reactions. There were only two real responses he could expect from people — either overbearing concern or dismissal. And neither of those appealed in any way.

Better to just keep to himself until the mood passed.

“You’re not wrong,” he said.

Something flickered in Loki’s eyes, there and gone before Tony had a chance to interpret it. What was easier to interpret, at least in terms of _what_ the expression was if not where it was coming from, was the stubborn scowl which came to his face. That at least was a little closer to the kind of look he was used to seeing on the mage’s face.

“I seldom am, Armor Man,” he said, and much of the softness which had been in his tone before was replaced with his usual overblown inflections. “One would think that you, genius that you are, would have realized that. _Now_ ,” he turned, taking his gaze away from Tony at last and looking over his worktables. “Tell me how you’ve been progressing with your studies. I can see that you’ve been _attempting_ to crack the shield’s secrets. How has that been going?” He raised a brow at him, the beginnings of a condescending smirk lurking around his lips.

Tony stared at him. That… wasn’t what he had expected. “The shield?”

“Yes.”

“The one we picked up from those wannabe Asgardian guys. You want to know what I’ve learned about it so far.”

“Obviously being on your own for too long is bad for you. Your mind has gotten lamentably slow with no one around to speak with.”

Tony shook his head, though he couldn’t fully deny the accusation. Certainly his brain _felt_ plenty fogged. It felt as though he were lagging yards behind wherever Loki was. Surely the conversation had skipped several steps to have gotten to this point already…?

“I’m just… why would you be interested in what I’ve found out? Didn’t you say that you pretty much knew everything there was to know about these things already?” Tony waved a hand in the direction of his shield, which was, he realized as his brain slowly came back online, just laying out in the open where any munchkin could see it if they happened to walk in. It wasn’t like it was even obscured where it lay on his worktable — it _couldn’t_ be to a certain extent, because the damn thing _ate_ anything it touched. That was one of the major things he _really_ wanted to figure out, was where all of the things the shield absorbed actually _went_ …

“I don’t recall saying that I knew _everything_ there was to know about the shields,” Loki said airily. “It’s rarely helpful to claim to know everything there is to be known on any subject. There’s always the possibility that someone will come at a subject in an entirely new way, and discover more than had ever been suspected of being there. I believe what I said at the time was ‘I am familiar with the technology.’ And being more familiar than you does not automatically make one _completely_ knowledgeable.”

“You do like your loopholes, don’t you?” The last of the coffee was cooler than was probably best, but it was still good, with plenty of the spices settled to the bottom, waking up his tongue. “Alright, fine. You know more about them than me. Probably,” he added, smirking when Loki raised a brow at him. “So you’ve come by to see if I’ve worked out anything particularly interesting about them? Or you intend to share your knowledge if my investigation into how these things work has turned up in a dead end?”

“Oh, now, you credit me with _far_ too much kindness.” Loki leaned back in his stool, his expression arranged in an expression of smug superiority which — while familiar — didn’t seem to be much like his _real_ face. “Why on Earth would I ever wish to help you, when watching you struggle to work it out for yourself is so entertaining?”

He wanted to call the mage out on his bullshit, argue with him that he wasn’t nearly as much of a cold hearted ass as he liked to make everyone think he was. But there were better things to talk about. If Loki wasn’t going to insist on prying into why he’d been gone for so long, then they might as well talk about science. And magic.

So they talked.

Tony explained everything he had done so far, which consisted mainly of figuring out _how_ to deal with the shield when it was, more or less, a portable black hole. Nothing ever came back or even seemed _able_ to come back. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, he supposed. So long as objects were still held, they could be extracted again. So if he held a pen, stuck it into the shield, and then pulled it back, it would still be a whole, functional pen.

When he tried to put a small camera into the shield, however, or _any_ instrument to get an idea of what might be inside the thing, they registered nothing. No matter the type of reading he was looking for, visual, audio, chemical, radiation, _whatever_ , the readouts were always the same: Zero.

At least the shield didn't destroy what went into it.

Tony had to admit to a morbid curiosity to see what would happen if he threw the damn thing into the ocean. Which would come first, the shield to getting ‘full,’ or would the sea completely drain into the thing?

Loki listened to him. Whenever he slowed down, he asked questions. If it looked as though he were about to trail away into nothing, Loki would poke at him.

“Really, your instruments are so primitive, what sorts of readings did you _expect_ them to come back with?”

“I’m amazed you haven’t tried sticking your _hand_ into it yet. It seems like a natural progression for you.”

“Try not to feed it too much, Stark. We don’t know for certain if there’s an upper limit, or what would happen if it were reached.”

Eventually they got to the point where Tony had rigged up a stand to hold the shield steady while he performed various experiments… and then it became a challenge to figure out _what_ experiments to try.

“Everything just falls into the damned thing,” Tony said, aware that he was dangerously close to whining. “And I get absolutely nothing back with readings, not even quantum!”

“Mmm…” Loki looked at the shield, as though considering the problem. It wasn’t likely, considering what he’d said before about already knowing plenty about the things. “Have you considered that the majority of your interactions with the shield have been capitulatory?”

Tony blinked at him. “Capitulatory? How am I capitulating to a _shield?”_

There was a long pause, oddly weighted. Tony replayed what he’d said, trying to figure out what it was that Loki was attempting to bring his attention to. Before he could decide, Loki answered. “You capitulate by giving it what it wants — in a sense. You know that the shield takes in objects and energy, and yet that’s your only way of interacting with it. Constantly giving to it and expecting some sort of return. Does that seem the most logical approach to you?”

Tony stared at Loki, and then at the shield. He was reasonably certain that Loki wasn’t talking strictly about the shield on his worktable, anymore, but what he was saying _also_ made sense for the physical shield. He was still too foggy to try and divide his attention that much. “So what would you suggest? Try getting it to cough something up?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of measuring _around_ the shield, rather than attempting to measure its interior.”

The suggestion set off Tony’s imagination. He’d done a little bit of that near the beginning of his experimenting, but then he’d become so focused on finding out all he could about what was going on with the _center_ of the shield and where it was everything was _going_. And yeah, maybe he hadn’t been thinking terribly clearly for the last… however long. Else he might have thought of what Loki suggested earlier himself.

It was on his mind now, though, and it was beginning to feel as though the caffeine in that coffee was beginning to kick in.

Tony began running through a list of things he could try to get a proper measurement off of the shield. Running experiments around it and noting inconsistencies, running experiments _through_ it, as he had been doing, but paying more attention to what was happening just outside it… It was a roundabout way of finding anything out, but it might work. It was worth trying, and see if it produced better results.

The coffee was doing its work, but there was only so much it could do on its own. His head buzzed with new energy and new ideas, but his body was refusing to follow suit. It felt as though he were dragging around sandbags on every limb. Sandbags, moreover, which had been soaked with water. So he made a running list of everything he thought of to try later, occasionally adding a suggestion from Loki, as he was being so obliging and providing some. But as much as he wanted to get started right then and there, and finally get some results to study, his body had reached the end of its rope. He didn’t know how long he’d been passed out on his own worktable, but it hadn’t been enough, even if it _had_ been a few days.

“Why don’t I show you how to make this coffee, Stark, since you seem to be so fond of it?”

Tony blinked, unsure if he’d heard that right. “What? You want to teach me how to make it?”

Loki tilted his head at him. “Assuming that you have the capacity to learn, then yes. Is there a reason you seem so surprised?”

“I just…” He trailed off, and then shrugged. “I dunno, I just thought that it was top secret or something. I figured you’d be holding it hostage for ages, and that you’d be using the promise of amazing coffee as a sort of extortion tactic.”

Loki considered it for a second. “It’s an interesting idea,” he said eventually. “But I think if I wanted to extort anything out of you, I could come up with something more effective than a mere cup of coffee.”

There might have been a smirk there. It was hard to tell.

Tony trailed after Loki, following him to the elevators up to the main penthouse of the Tower, and then to the kitchen. It felt a little strange, following Loki around in his own home. He hadn’t been aware that Loki was so familiar with the place, but at the same time he wasn’t terribly surprised. He wondered how many times Loki had actually been in the Tower. Tony had invited him over a few times, and he was pretty sure that the mage had made it in a few more on top of that.

The time when he had snuck in to leave that first cup of coffee hadn’t been the first time he’d come in uninvited.

“Not to belittle your coffee making skills or anything,” he said as Loki moved around the kitchen, gathering up the supplies he would need, “but how complicated can it be? I mean, unless you’re using _actual_ magic to put this stuff together or enhance it or something, I’m pretty sure I could manage with a set of instructions.”

Loki didn’t look up from where he was setting up the French press. Tony would admit, he didn’t think he’d ever used it, so his question was more or less answered without Loki having to say a word. But how hard could it be to use a French press?

“If it were so very easy, Stark, then I think you would have replicated the recipe on your own by now.” He moved some of the parts, checking that everything worked the way it was meant to. Which was fair enough, Tony had never checked, himself — but for that very reason, it was still brand new. Surely there couldn’t be _that_ much wrong with it. “I know you’re a bit of an enthusiast,” Loki said, somewhat distractedly, “and you have a surprisingly discerning palate. I doubt that there would have been very much to stop you, had it really been as simple as you seem to think it is.”

“Maybe,” Tony said. He was starting to lose track a little of what Loki was saying. He was too interested in watching him set everything up.

He’d watched Loki work before on small spells. Those had been fascinating experiences as well, but in a different way. Then, Tony had been too distracted with the entire process and with trying to follow the logistics of it all, to puzzle out how it worked, how much of it was discipline and how much of it was raw talent… Watching Loki work with magic was interesting, but it was also distracting. It was like studying for a test, but for a subject he was unfamiliar with, in a language he’d never heard before. Too much of his focus was taken up in the puzzle of it to really just… _watch_.

With coffee, Tony could just watch. He might be unfamiliar with the specific equipment that the mage was pulling out of his cupboards, but he wasn’t so unfamiliar with the basic process to need to figure out what he was even doing. Watching Loki move around the kitchen without his horns, his scepter or — he realized belatedly — his _coat_ , was a jarringly domestic experience. He set up the French press, fiddling about with the parts until they were all settled and set to his standards. He rummaged around the kitchen again until he found another piece of equipment and brought it out — a coffee grinder.

Tony blinked and stared at it. Did he even _have_ a coffee grinder…?

Loki set the grinder next to the press. He fetched two mugs from another cupboard, as well as a couple of spoons. He went round and round the kitchen, and on each pass gathered up more. Coffee beans, (he had those as well?), cream from the fridge, several different spices from another cupboard… Throughout the entire process, Loki was entirely focused on his task, giving all of his attention to what he was doing, as though the preparation of coffee were some vital task. It was like watching him weave spells, in a way, as he’d given that task exactly the same amount of attention.

It was kind of adorable.

Once the mage-turned-barista finished setting up his stage, so to speak, he turned back to Tony.

“Well? Do you intend to only sit and watch?”

“Uh--“

“If you mean to learn, then you will need to be hands on.”

Tony was really too tired for this. His mind had gone off from that suggestion in directions it was never meant to go. Shaking off the intrusive imaginings as best he could, Tony got up, despite his body’s protests, and came around the little kick out of the counter to stand next to Loki, looking over his setup. It managed to look a little more intimidating from this angle.

Loki managed to be a little more intimidating from this angle. Or maybe it was the proximity.

“Oookay,” he said, running his eye over the gear. “I’ll admit that this is all a little more involved than what I’m used to.”

The smirk on Loki’s face was rather smug, but it didn’t last long. A quick flicker as he said, “I know,” and then gone again. “I had gathered as much by your usual setup, and by your tastes when we visit the coffee stands around campus. Everything here is painfully simple, but when outside, you invariably order some of the most complex drinks. And how enthusiastically you pounce on them suggests that you only get to enjoy them when they come from someone else’s hand.”

He couldn’t help the little smile. “Been thinking a lot about my coffee habits, Lokes?”

“More than may be strictly necessary,” he said without losing a beat. Then he turned away from Tony, as though not realizing what he said. Or not caring. He picked up the little bag of coffee beans he’d found. A bag which Tony had gotten for free, he was pretty sure. Or maybe it had been a part of the supplies he’d apparently shipped in _en masse_ without even knowing what most of it was, like the French press and the grinder. He knew they must have come in with the rest of his things, but hell if he remembered even _ordering_ them. Apparently there were some things which just came standard with a kitchen?

“Have you ever ground coffee beans?”

Tony blinked, staring at the unassuming little bag in Loki’s hands. “Um. Once or twice, I think? It’s not really something which I _need_ to do, so…”

Loki waved, getting Tony to stop. “For this coffee,” he said, contriving to sound very grave as he did so, “you will have to grind your own beans.”

The bag was deposited in his hands. It seemed like an awful lot of responsibility to put on a guy all at once. “Alright. Grinding beans. I can do that.”

Or at least he _thought_ he could do that. Tony fed the beans into the grinder, went through all the motions which would make them ground up beans, and stepped back, sure of a job well done.

When Loki peeked into it, though, his nose wrinkled. “No good. Try again.”

“What?” Tony pushed Loki out of the way to peek inside. It certainly _looked_ like ground up coffee in there. He looked up at Loki. “I dunno what _you_ would call this, but…”

“ _I_ would call that powder.” Loki sniffed — _actually sniffed_ at him.

Tony stared at it. He wouldn’t call it _powder_ , really… but sure, he could see what Loki meant, even if he was exaggerating. It was a nice, fine grind. He’d made sure to keep going on that until he couldn’t feel any more catches in the grinder. Shouldn’t he be getting points for thoroughness? “Okay?”

And now Loki _tsked_ at him. “If the grounds are that fine, the coffee will be bitter. Moreover, with the French press, grounds that small are sure to slip through and into the coffee itself. You want the grounds much coarser than this.”

He wasn’t quite as sure as he had been a few minutes ago that he was actually awake. Surely he was still asleep, or had slipped into an alternate universe. Maybe he was in some weird Bizarr-O world where Loki was a snooty, coffee obsessed barista and he was insisting on teaching Tony everything he knew. Somehow it made more sense than the Loki _he_ knew suddenly revealing this odd little wrinkle in his personality.

Alternate reality or not, Loki had him grind up beans three more times before he was satisfied. By then Tony was losing his patience, and when Loki looked in and pronounced his latest attempt as ‘fine,’ he was less pleased with himself and more relieved he wouldn’t be made to grind up _another_ batch.

Then there were the relatively simple steps of putting the coarse grounds into the press, adding water and waiting. Somehow Loki managed to make even that complex, going on about the amount of grounds depending on number of people to be served and strength of the coffee desired, the amount of water according to the same considerations, the _temperature_ of the water…

If this was what it took to make Loki’s coffee, then he might just leave the secrets to the mage, and go with the idea of bribing him for cups already made. This was far too finicky when all he wanted was something nice and warm to drink.

Once the grounds were in and covered with the water — the proper amount and temperature — Loki set a small timer for a few minutes. Apparently that was something which was important to measure carefully as well: time. Tony took those few minutes to lean against a counter. He wasn’t quite willing to sit down, as that would mean getting back up again and that was entirely too much work, but his legs didn’t appreciate having to stand so much.

“Not accustomed to putting this much thought into something so ‘simple’?”

It was still odd to look at Loki when he wasn’t wearing his horns, and even more so now that Tony had noticed that his coat was gone. He was wearing a suit — or an Asgardian’s interpretation of a suit, anyway. Slacks, dress shirt, a waistcoat and tie, all in cuts and colors which marked them as being _different_. The most obvious giveaway had been the coat, which had been an Asgardian answer for a jacket. But even with such obvious ringers for ‘suit’ still on him, Loki managed to look dressed down. Without the coat-jacket, it was also much easier to see how lean he was. Tony knew that Loki weighed a _lot_ more than he looked like he weighed, knew that he could toss Tony around even if he were in full armor, but it was so tempting to try and lift the Asgardian. Lift him up, have him in his arms and close, and…

“I think I put entirely _too much_ thought into some very simple things,” Tony said, shifting. Being this tired was making it too easy for his mind to wander.

Loki shrugged, leaning against a counter as well, looking as relaxed and at ease in Tony’s kitchen as… well, _more_ than Tony was, honestly. “Too little, too much, not enough. Finding a balance seems to be presenting something of a challenge, wouldn’t you say?”

Given just how fast his heart was racing, he was inclined to agree. “Maybe,” he said. “But that’s… that’s part of the fun of a lot of things, isn’t it? Finding the balance.”

“I might question your ideas on what constitutes ‘fun,’ Stark. Though I may not have to.” He looked over to the trash can, where Tony’s previous attempts at coffee grinding had all been consigned. “Your own face betrays how little you think of having to try and try again to find the correct balance.”

“Oh, come on! You can’t take _that_ as an example of how much I may or may not enjoy something else which takes practice to get right.”

“Oh, no?” Loki’s look was quietly challenging. “And why shouldn’t I do precisely that?”

“Because… because _grinding coffee_ isn’t exactly a fun thing to do, is it? It’s not like people go out of their way to grind coffee. But if what you’re practicing _for_ over and over is enjoyable as well, then that’s a completely different.”

“One grinds coffee not because they find the act itself particularly enjoyable, but because they want the coffee.” He looked away from Tony, to look on the press and the steeping grounds. “One endures the labor in order to get to the prize. It does not mean that they find the labor enjoyable, merely that they desire that prize enough to put in the work.”

“And you don’t think I’m the type that’s willing to put in the work?”

“Some things require more labor than grinding coffee beans, and with less reward to look forward to than a warm cup.”

The timer went off, and it was time to _gently_ do the pressing part of the French press. It was a little bit of a blur to Tony at that point. Press the handle down, not too hard or fast, coffee comes out. Then the additives — cream, a little bit of spice, but not too much… Not much of it stuck with Tony. He was too busy thinking over what Loki had said, watching his hands as they danced over cups and spoons and jars… Without Tony really absorbing anything of what was being said, they soon each had a mug clasped in hand.

Tony took a sip of his. It was good, but there was a definite difference in this cup compared to what Loki had brought him before. Which was ridiculous. How much difference could there really be when Loki had been guiding him the entire time?

…had the beans felt his resentment in having to grind them so much?

Whatever. The coffee was still good. Maybe not _as_ good, but still amazing. He drank deep, and felt himself unwind just a little bit.

“You know… I’m not sure that’s right.”

Loki looked up from his coffee, expression puzzled. “You don’t think what is right, precisely?”

“That there’s no one out there who actually _likes_ grinding coffee beans. There’s all types, you know. There’s bound to be someone out there who likes the ‘tedious’ parts of making coffee as much as the coffee itself. It’s all a part of the process. If you love coffee, then in a way you’re going to love every part of it. And even if you don’t like the _process_ of grinding coffee at first, there’s going to at least be some positive connotations associated with it.” He took a long sip. He wasn’t sure if what he was saying made sense, if what he _meant_ was coming across at all, or even if _he_ knew what he was trying to say anymore. It probably wasn’t the best idea to try and get all of this across when it felt like his brain had been blown up to the size of a hot air balloon and then deflated again.

Oh, well.

“I think I could get to really like grinding coffee.”

He didn’t look up to see Loki’s expression. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what it was, or try and interpret what was going on in Loki’s head. He didn’t trust himself to be able to interpret any of it very well, or to know much of anything of what it might actually _mean_.

He heard when Loki put his mug down on the counter. He listened as he pushed away and closed the distance between them. When Loki gently took the mug out of Tony’s hands, he didn’t try to hold on to it. But he did look up.

Green. Tony didn’t think he’d ever noticed just how green Loki’s eyes were, or been so overwhelmed by someone simply _looking_ at him. It felt like he was being adsorbed, like the same enchantment on the shield was also in Loki’s gaze, drawing him in to be lost forever.

Maybe that was why nothing ever came back from the shield. It didn’t _want_ to.

Loki’s fingers across his cheek reminded him that it had been a long time since he’d last shaved. A couple of days, from the feel of it. That barely registered with him at all when Loki’s palm was pressed against his cheek, and those eyes were looking into him the way they were… He leaned into the touch, his heart speeding when Loki’s lips twitched up just a little and he didn’t pull away.

“Is this something which you’ve given more thought, Anthony?”

And damn, the sound of his own _name_ shouldn’t make him want to shiver. He looked up at Loki, hands gripping the edge of the counter behind him. He didn’t trust himself to reach for Loki yet, not quite yet…

“Too little, too much, not enough. When it comes to coffee, I think any negatives would be far outweighed by the positives.”

Loki smiled, and Tony returned it.

“What about you?” he asked, not quite believing his mouth was still going. “Do you think you could put up with coarse grounds for mediocre coffee?”

The pad of Loki’s thumb swept over Tony’s lower lip, and he shuddered on a harsh exhale. The green of Loki’s eyes was almost lost as his pupils dilated.

“I think you underestimate not only my resolve, but your own value as a restorative.”

The response Tony had to that was quickly forgotten. Not that he’d actually had one ready, but…

But even an ad lib reply was denied by Loki leaning forward and pressing his lips against Tony’s.

Tony _did_ have thoughts about this. A lot. More than was strictly necessary. In all of his imaginings, he’d played this out in a myriad of ways, in a variety of moods and situations, and had thought he’d had a fairly good idea of what kissing Loki would be like.

He hadn’t ever imagined Loki being _hesitant_.

It was practically the ghost of a kiss, his lips brushing so gently against Tony’s that he barely felt it — as much breath as it was actual contact. Somehow, that feather light touch made Tony’s stomach lurch, his heart quickly following suit, and he pushed forward, chasing the kiss, seeking _more_.

Loki startled slightly, but he didn’t pull away. After a moment, _he_ was pressing closer as well, the hand at Tony’s cheek slipping to his neck, holding him steady, guiding him to tilt just _so_ , and Tony’s nerves thrilled. His hands were no longer holding on to the counter, but holding on to _Loki._ There was nothing which could hold him steady, so he might as well hold on to what was making him feel _un_ steady.

As Loki pressed in closer to him, pressing him against the counter, his touch growing more confident and his kisses more fervent, it occurred to Tony that he’d been far too distracted the last few hours for the sort of thoughts which had been plaguing him the last few _days_ to bother him. He smiled into the kiss, and pulled Loki a little closer as he replayed the evening, and saw what it was the mage had been doing.

This time, Loki had come to _his_ rescue. And if this was going to be his chosen method of rescuing every time, then Tony wasn’t going to complain.

 

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone!
> 
> You can find me on  
> Tumblr: [@ehtarwrites](http://ehtarwrites.tumblr.com/)  
> Twitter: [@ehtarwrites](https://twitter.com/ehtarwrites)  
> Discord: @ehtarwrites#4962 
> 
> If anyone wants to come say hi or chat about nerdy things, hmu! ♥


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